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"Aiih, to think that the Great Oneself should be reduced to a Goblin's nanny. Too far beyond the stretch of language! What Reason arrives thus? Haaaih." Dark Luminary, Blade Emperor, None Beyond, &c, sighed loudly for someone to hear and cower, or simper and pander. Either would do, so long as he felt Served.
He used to have empires at heel. Temples of hierodules fitted and supplied for his...appetites. Sorceror armies made of the eunuch sons of his enemies; a forest of black spears, each one marking the end of a noble or gifted bloodline.
All that sway and extravagancr now reduced to one greenoid with no hygiene and no manners, and a hovel at the edge of a ghost town.
Not that he stayed despondent for long: there is no need to mourn the present beyond what is needed to crave the future twice as hard!
He had been playing with these Dimm Culti for a bit, since his murderous disciple had gone off to help someone Across the Yellow Font, hmhm; they're a basic Deviant Alchemic creation: Living Crucibles, or Flesh Caulds.
A low kind of Cultivation, or very poorly explored, since its practitioners were usually just dirty old men, or young talents too easily distracted by the pleasure of the process to strive for attainment.
In a competent cultivator these Flesh Caulds would remain sentient, retaining most of their mind and memory, though volition constrained by spells and charms. The point of it was to burn up their Spiritual Root to form a Spirit Core for the cultivator to consume. These, being made from peasants, have no Root to begin with, so they could only be used as normal Alchemic Caulds, producing Pills and Medicines out of the rarities fed in.
As Alchemic Caulds go, these are of Poor quality, barely good enough for Exterior Disciples to practice on. The good was, Tudi's natural fecundity augmented by his new False Spiritual Root, meant that he could reliably create many of these, or as many as they needed.
If only they could take instruction! Then they could gather the herbs and so forth themselves and process it automatically. Haaih. Worthless.
This loss of mind and memory was that so-termed "Dimmu Queen"'s doing. Through these Dimm Culti she was extending her vision, if not also her reach, into this Mundane Realm.
Normally the Absolute™ would not take kindly to such intrusions on his privacy. But for Her he permitted it: if there was some way for her to reach into this Realm using these gray grinning dimwits he wanted to see it happen with his own eyes. If he understood her motivations he would tempt her to it, just to see, because to see is to discover, as to know is to learn.
He was already working out how they fed sensation and information back to Dimmu; if the knowledge of reaching into the Dimm Realm ever came into his grasp, the so-termed Queen's reign would be pleasantly shortened, and he, Yang Wuhan, will have One Crown Dominion over Two Realms! No less deserves the Absolute™!
•••
"You're back, Tudi. What's good."
