71 Anticipation
Moving through dense foliage within the Valley of Mist, Hermann felt mentally drained listening to his subordinates as they all sheathed their swords
"Good job Steffen! You managed to take a whole four steps backwards before your junior slew the thing for you!" Christopher laughed in a brash voice.
"Lot of good you were Chris!" Steffen shouted in response. "Your face is so white I'd think you a woman if you weren't so ugly."
Harmann could feel a headache coming on. Of the four he was travelling with, the youngest two, Leo and Steffen were but 16 and 18 respectively. They were both metahumans bearing greater talent for cultivation than most, but neither had seen much real battle, having grown up in the safety of their martial sect.
The other two members of their party however, Christopher and Gunther, were older men in their late twenties and early thirties, and clashed with their juniors too much for Hermann's liking.
"Enough. Save your childish squabbles for the sect.��� He ordered in a gruff voice, and they all quieted.
At Least Leo, the youngest in their party was level headed. Steffen might have talent for cultivation, but he was arrogant and his talent with the sword was nothing special, Leo on the other hand. Hermann truly believed the kid could do great things in the future, he just needed to be exposed to real combat a few dozen times.
As the party finally quieted, the excitement and fear of their last encounter dying down, Leo Esser kept a hand rested on the hilt of his sword as he listened to the illusory noises within the fog.
He had a nagging suspicion that they were being followed. A gut feeling more than anything. But he was not an intuition meta, and so did not hold exaggerated faith in gut feelings, after all the Valley of Mist was a strange place, and it was possible he'd simply become paranoid.
Nevertheless, a small voice in the back of his head kept whispering warnings. They had all felt as if they were being watched since the moment they entered this place, but being followed? That was new.
"Relax Leo, if anything or anyone dared attack you, they would have to get past this senior brother of yours first." Steffen grinned as he walked by Leo's side.
"Ha, get a load of this guy. How thick skinned can you be?" Chris and Gunther laughed from behind them.
Leo knew Steffen's words came from a good place, even if they were filled to the brim with bravado.
"Thank you senior brother, it's probably nothing."
Although those were his words, Leo's eyes still swept through the surrounding fog in a futile attempt to peer through it.
"Quiet now." Their party leader's voice called out softly.
Leo turned back to Hermann, their leader, to find him staring at one particular point in the fog, his left hand gripping the mouth of the sheath at his waist.
'That's odd.' Leo thought. 'It doesn't feel like we're being followed anymore.'
**
Lucian and Tess retreated at a swift speed without making a sound. Not even their cloaks made noise flapping in the wind as they floated back like ghosts.
They had stayed far enough away from the group they heard in the fog that no extrasensory abilities should be able to detect them, and eavesdropped to try and discern the group's identity. If they belonged to Demia, the two could approach them safely with their Knight and Fist badges, and attain information.
If they belonged to Nalduri or Toubia… well that would be another story.
But as he stalked the group, listening to their banter, Lucian's eyes had gone wide, feeling as if he had just locked eyes with someone. Trusting his gut feeling, Lucian retreated almost on instinct, and found Tess not a step behind him.
After they had retreated far, the two stopped to gather their thoughts and consider their actions.
"One of them can sense things in the fog, far better than we can." Tess said.
"It shouldn't be perfect. If he knew exactly who or what we were he would not have acted so mildly, no matter his allegiance. Chances are he only knew where we were, not what we were." Lucian replied as a few chains of thought were prioritized on the many possibilities this new element proposed.
-'What would they be looking for?
---'They had at least five members by the footsteps and voices
-----'By the voices, there seemed to be two youths and three adults, one of which is middle aged.
-'Depends what kind of powers they cultivate.
---'What's the possibility of other members?
-----'By their ages, if they're standard cultivators only the eldest should be an issue excluding formation arts.
-'I heard them sheathing swords after the battle we missed, do they cultivate the sword?
---'I doubt they have other members, I heard nothing in the fog react to a detachment and by the sound of their footsteps there is no room in their formation for a sixth member.
-----'Could they have metas among them? This is a dangerous place for ordinary youths, cultivators or not.
-'I don't know enough to determine their destination, but there's also the chance they're here on a military mission.
---'What can they achieve with five members? Sabotage? They're not sneaking past the border, they went too deep, the danger's not worth it.
-----'The youths are likely metahumans, the party leader should be at least 3rd stage, likely a daoist by his sensory abilities, augmenters rarely acquire potent extrasensory techniques.'
Like a scrambled mess, three chains of thought alternated rapidly within Lucian's mind, all the while he still listened to the sounds nearby and remained alert.
"It's too risky to follow them and we have no reason to attack. I also can't piece together where they're going, we'd be better off finding our own way." He said a moment later.
"Alright." Tess sighed, obviously disappointed at the lack of action. "Well, if it hasn't changed since last I looked into it, the Spirit Orchid Field should be another day's travel from here. If we move now, even if that group is headed there too we can beat them to it."
"Great, let's move then. I'll be sure to leave a written apology in the dirt for when they catch up" Lucian smiled.
With more silent movements, the two shot ahead, tracing the base of a mountain as they moved towards the Spirit Orchid Field. Despite the heavy fog, the bright sun was still visible through it all, and with that the two could find their way.
During the nights, Lucian would do some light cultivation, consider the development of new applications for his powers, or train his control over the bloodbond, but he never did the complex mental exercises of Unhindered Motion, not wanting to compromise his watch.
He had cultivated the Steel Body art so much in the estate that his body truly lived up to the name of the technique. But cultivating it any further was an uphill battle. It could always be done, but progress would be incredibly slow for the time and effort put in. Not to mention he'd need people who could consistently deliver controlled strikes at greater and greater strengths to further condition his body.
This kind of soft cap in a technique, a point past which training it was no longer viable for most was called 'completion', and was one of three stages people used to categorize their expertise in a technique.
'Mastery' meant to have reached the higher ends of a technique, though the exact distinction differed from the mouth of one man versus the next.
'Completion' was to achieve the 'soft cap' that so many techniques had. In the case of the steel body art, someone who cultivated no other body refinement technique would often have a body like steel by the point they reached Completion in it. For Lucian, it was not so clean cut as he was also a body cultivator.
'Grand Completion' is to achieve the fullest potential of a technique. While all techniques were limitless in the right hands, that required one to solely devote themselves to the technique, opening the way for infinite growth. That aside, if you ever reached a sort of 'hard cap', unable to push the technique further under normal circumstances, then you had achieved Grand Completion.
With Completion of the Steel Body technique, Lucian felt it a satisfactory time to say goodbye to the art, as he would no longer have helpers to beat him every day in training, nor would he have the time and freedom to devote to training a technique with little return, not now, while he was still in the prime of his growth as a cultivator.
When Tess rose from her sleep, she swapped shifts with Lucian as he retreated to the tent, and the next day they continued travelling to the Spirit Orchid Field.
**
Within the everpresent fog on one particular mountain within the Valley of Mist, the barrier between the material realm and the spirit realm, consisting of all those extradimensional plains, grew thin.
In a cave at the depths of that mountain, a natural pool as old as the mist itself began to bubble, as it's clear waters turned murky red with a hint of black. Mournful groans, moans, and shrieks echoed from the now bloody pool as the plains of death, the dead, sorrow, grief, anger, and many more bled into the material waters.
A spiritual nature billowed forth with the smell of blood as the pool's bottom vanished in a void of black, and the scarlet surface solidified into an elastic film.
Long, sharp claws pushed against the bloody film covering the pool's top, as it rose and became taut, preventing the crossing of something horrible within.
A long snout and toothy maw pushed against the film as it thinned and was pushed outwards, bit by bit. Anticipation swelled in the air as something not of this realm, a manifestation of things immaterial pushed against the walls that separated this dimension from what lay beyond.
A hissing sound droned on, echoing loudly within the large cave as the shadows deepened.
