Chapter 453: The Truth of the Loam

As much as Omilaena wanted to belt out the truth, this was big enough that spreading it wildly could be a problem. Based on the dead cultivators and the way the Krysali were all hustling, she surmised that Zin Nim's position must have been attacked and they needed to retreat. Which was fine, but it meant obnoxious people moving everywhere and privacy was at a premium. Eventually Kai got a flying sword large enough to fit them all and they piled on to fly separately. Though Omilaena might want to tease about the proximity, her thoughts were too important for that, so she just forced them out.

"The Loam of the Gods is fucked."

Both of them stared at her and she tried to think about how to order everything. Eventually Kai bumped his hip against hers. "Give us more than that."

"Maybe it was able to magically grow plants in an instant once, but not anymore." Omilaena ran her hands through her hair, trying to think about which of her tests would mean the most to them. "The soil is dead. Like if you planted the same crop over and over again until nothing was left but sand, spiritually. It's actually worse than normal soil."

Up to that point, Zin Nim had been strangely out of touch, but now she looked up skeptically. "Are you sure that was the real Loam?"

"Like if all this was just for a decoy? Nu-uh-uh." Omilaena waved aside the possibility. "There were ancient buildings there and relics of past harvests, I can show you later. But everything recent is in disrepair, and the dead soil is distinctly different. I think this is just like Irun: they had something of immense power until it ran out."

"But the Verdant River sect has been ascendant..."

"More importantly," Kai said quietly, "they've been producing this immortality elixir. How does that work, if it isn't made by the Loam?"

"That's a separate issue," Omilaena said. "You know all those corpses they were dumping on the other side of the wall? Turns out they're extracting something from them, plowing the rest into the soil, and combining the results into the elixir. Maybe the Loam was involved at some point, but not anymore. This is just pure human lives, at a horribly inefficient rate: I estimate it probably takes them a thousand lives to get one bottle of the stuff."

They both stared at her and Omilaena belatedly remembered that people didn't usually talk about converting thousands of corpses into potions. She'd had plans to soft-pedal that part, before she discovered the much more important news. Whatever, they would understand the important part if she pushed.

"What this means is that the Verdant River sect isn't rising, this is its dying gasp," she explained. "They developed this method to make everyone think that they still have the Loam, and it does seem effective, but they're failing to deliver on everything else. Everything the Loam usually creates has run out. There's no way they can keep this up for long, and the Masterful Crown clan knows it."

Kai began to nod as he accepted it. "That would match what the heirs to the different sects are doing. They're all arguing over what to do about the crisis, and trying to keep the secret. Hence why Yul Wei Ren is in charge of everything and the Verdant River sect is treated as second class in its own territory."

"Wait," Zin Nim said, "what about the elixir itself? Wherever it comes from, did you get any?"

"Oh, I stole practically all of it." Omilaena pulled a jar from her spatial satchel and flipped it in her hand. "Pure concentrated human juice, right here. I actually think that stealing such a large supply might have dealt a mortal blow to the Verdant River sect. They probably have a little more at other vaults, but this was the motherlode. They were counting on rationing this out over years and now it's gone."

"Then can we take it and gain the same power?"

"In theory, but not yet. Not because of ethical qualms, obviously not. But I also stole the records about how to use it properly and I want to make sure there aren't any pitfalls or potential side effects. We're young enough that there's no need to rush."

That made her go quiet, for some reason, while Kai was clearly still stuck on the "massive loss of human life" or something like that. "It must have started small," he mused, "then they've been starting fights in order to scale up the number of corpses. But since they actually have a powerful result, they can't keep up with demand."

"Right, that's exactly what I'd bet. I haven't seen all the numbers myself, but I'm pretty sure that's what we'll find."

"Do you think they'll come after us to get it back?"

"That really depends on how organized they are." Omilaena sighed as she thought back to the battle. "The heir to the Verdant River sect is dead, plus half the people in their territory aren't actually on their side. If it comes out that the Verdant River sect is dying, the sharks might descend to tear them apart."

"Speaking of that, Zin Nim had an unexpected encounter." Kai put his hand on her shoulder and, after a little encouragement, she explained about what had happened.

The combat came easily to her, so Omilaena got a quick explanation of Xir Xan Khan's attack on their location. She was more interested in why he'd made the assumption that the vault attack had been the primary threat, but that could come later. It was obvious there were other things that Zin Nim wasn't so comfortable talking about, ways that the encounter had disturbed her on a deeper level.

Based on what Kai coaxed out of her, Zin Nim seemed to be experiencing another crisis of confidence. Believing that the Blackblood Physique had ruined her on some level, or that she didn't live up to the stupid Cloudspire ideals camped in her head. Omilaena wished they could just cart her to bed and fuck some sense into her, but this one seemed like it wouldn't be fixed so easily.

"And so I want to keep working on Physique," Zin Nim concluded. "We need more resources, anything we can get, just in case. If there's a chance we can purify the Blackblood Physique, we need to take it as soon as possible."

"This really seems to bother you," Kai said. He was being gentle, but it wasn't enough to overcome her morose tendencies. "What is it?"

"I just... I thought the Blackblood Physique was mine, that it would help me. Now I just find out there's... another way that people could exploit me, use me as a living cauldron. I thought I was finally free of that, but it's like... it's like finding out I have another virginity that everyone has been waiting to steal all along."

"Well," Omilaena drawled, "you still haven't lost your foot virginity."

"Stop making up new virginities!" Zin Nim struck at her stomach, but when Omilaena countered by pulling her into an embrace, her squirms weren't so unhappy. Omilaena kept teasing her, getting her to blush and fume and otherwise forget about the seriousness of her problems.

Actually, Omilaena was more than a little worried herself. Not that the Blackblood Physique was really some trap, because she didn't believe power was that inflexible, but that Zin Nim might do something foolish in an effort to purify herself, something that couldn't be taken back. For all that Omilaena had seen souls grow in new directions, she had also seen people ruin themselves. Not every path was a viable one, and meddling with body and soul like this tended to go right off cliffs.

When they returned to the ship, Omilaena gave Zin Nim all of the Physique-building materials they'd collected and told her to meditate on those. During that time, Zin Nim belatedly remembered that she had the scroll she had been given. Not only was it not trapped, it actually seemed to be inside information on the Blackblood Physique.

But was it actually the right path? Omilaena claimed that she needed more time to study it, when in fact she was concerned that this was a dead end. Yes, with what was written there, she could have Zin Nim undergo the purification process. The other woman would gain a meaningful boost to her strength and a lot of excess energy, which she could give to Kai, so it wouldn't be a net negative.

And yet, even as she was reading an ancient scroll about a technique she didn't know well, Omilaena couldn't help but feel that this was wrong. She had a lot of experience with the black blood in Zin Nim's veins and it wasn't some infection or temporary catalyst. The blood had real strength, and flushing it out struck her as wasteful in a way she couldn't pin down.

As soon as she was certain Zin Nim wouldn't try anything on her own, Omilaena left her to her meditation and went out to clear her head. She actually could have used a good fuck, but both of them were distracted - it seemed like Kai was concerned about the Krysali and about his new "Redtree rebels" who were still fighting further south.

Well, one thing at a time.

Now that she had longer to think, Omilaena found some privacy and took out a sample of the Loam of the Gods. Yes, it was drained of strength, but she'd stolen it all anyway, just in case. She examined the soil, ran a few tests, and then began scrutinizing it using her goggles.

She was no farming specialist, but she knew that ordinary soil had a variety of kinds of life in it, whereas this soil was dead. Special soil from magical gardens tended to have forms of power baked into it, in one form or another.

But this... there was definitely something different here, yet none of the explanations satisfied her. It was as if this soil had more emptiness than the others. Like comparing a large jar to a small one, this soil had a capacity that she'd never seen before, except that capacity had run dry. Despite the skepticism of the others, Omilaena was quite confident that this had once been an Insanity.

And yet two of the Insanities had proved finite, and the others presumably had limits as well. They weren't artifacts of the gods or natural miracles, they were... relics of something else. Maybe they were "artifacts of the gods" except those gods weren't so different from them.

A day later, they finally reached a spot that Kai thought was safe to leave the Krysali. It didn't seem like they had been pursued, at least not very seriously. Based on everything that had happened, Omilaena wouldn't have been surprised if their opponents ended up fighting one another instead of doing anything useful. They had been a weak alliance at the best of times, and if the truth about the Loam was out, that would make them all go out for themselves.

When they met together, it looked like Zin Nim had partially recovered, at least intellectually. Omilaena glanced between them, wondering if they were going to spring a surprise on her. It wouldn't be a sexy one.

"We have several choices," Zin Nim said. "We've stolen the Verdant River sect's most valuable resources, so there is nothing tying us here. We could set out in a different direction and leave this behind."

Omilaena rolled her eyes. "But I'm guessing that Kai is too attached to his new friends?"

"Something like that."

"It isn't only that," Kai said. He shrugged off their teasing, instead meeting her gaze seriously. "We accomplished our objective, but that doesn't mean we need to leave. We've been hiding from the combined forces because that was the only way to break their defenses. But now that we have what we need, we could fight them directly."

"You explained that the Verdant River sect is dying, even if they don't know it yet." Zin Nim slapped a fist into her palm. "But they still have valuable resources. Let's go take them."

As she listened to their plan, Omilaena found herself smiling. It was a sexy surprise after all.