Molting the Mortal Coil

With the three Nascent Souls looking at him, Sage didn’t really have much of a choice. He’d already agreed to the task and it was time to get to work. He took a deep breath and then started striding towards the beast-head shaped lightning. While walking towards the open mouth he vaguely recognized it as similar to a snake or amphibian. The crackling electricity made it hard to pinpoint exactly what it looked like. Strangely, the electrical arcs dancing around him only felt like a brush of warm wind and when he stepped into the beast’s mouth it seemed like he was stepping onto a cloud. Or at least what the imagination wanted a cloud to be like. Soft and fluffy, like a giant pile of wispy non-cloying cotton. The beast’s mouth closed over him and his vision of the world was obscured by the intensity of the electrical arcs that made up the beast’s body.

Even though his vision was obscured, he could still see the outside world in a blurry and indistinct fashion between the dancing electrical arcs. He saw the three Clouds outside move to certain pillars around the room to form an equidistant triangle between them. Then they started moving their hands and Sage could feel the movement of energy in the room even through the Guardian Beast’s crackling head. They all looked upwards and Sage traced their gaze, looking up between the many pillars arranged in a loose circular shape. In the center of that circle a disc of crackling electrical energy came into being. The flashing lightning bolts moved at full speed to trace a circle into the air. The center of the circle started to grow dark and Sage felt the electrical energy transforming, calling upon some sort of Space Law.

Sage was far from reaching a level of understanding that would push him into the first degree of control over the Primal Law of Space. On the other hand, Cosmic Traction and assisting in the training of Jiyao had exposed him to the Major Space Law of Void Movement. If he had focused on it, instead of Poison, it was likely he could have already reached the first degree. While Poison related laws were considered uncommon, Space and Time related laws were notoriously difficult to advance and so Sage chose to stay away from them to start with. Guan Zhenyan once told him that the more powerful a cultivator got, the easier it would be to study the laws.

He could feel a hint of the space laws present among the nearly overpowering presence of the lightning and electrical laws in the area. The three of them released even more energy until Sage felt like the energy in the air was going to thicken into a liquid or even a solid form, the power felt so very dense and compressed around the Guardian Beast. Then the three Clouds clapped their hands together and Sage lost sight of the world again. His entire being felt like it was vibrating. After a few moments, Sage recovered his senses and took a look around.

The inside of the Guardian Beast had become a bit more substantial and opaque than it was before, but he could still see a hazy image of the outside world. His eyes widened as he noticed the twinkle of small lights breaking up an empty black nothingness. Are we traveling through space?

Traveling through the darkness, Sage now got a good look at the full body of the electrical beast he was riding within the mouth of. It had a long narrow body without any limbs, and Sage tried to determine what sort of snake it might be when it hit him. Of course, an Eel!

The Cloud Swallowing Thunder Eel. The name was a mouthful, which Sage noticed seemed to be a trait of very powerful Demonic Beasts. Someone, somewhere, must have decided that long and complicated names were given the most powerful of creatures. Many of them at least. There was also someone else who decided that the strongest beasts should have the most simple names like God Eagle, or Ultimate Viper. He liked to think it was some sort of ancient battle of nomenclature amongst a bunch of cultivator scholars.

A Cloud Swallowing Thunder Eel got its name from being large enough to swallow up clouds. As he’d experienced it didn’t have much of a corporeal form, being more like a lightning spirit that put a thundercloud to shame. It was quite a rare beast as only certain special locations had enough lightning energy to satisfy its needs. Given its extraordinary capabilities, Sage spent the trip trying to come up with methods he could use to take an egg from the Thunder Eel, or how to convince it to help mutate an egg for him. Unfortunately, nothing he did allowed him to communicate with the beast. He was merely a passenger in the monster’s mouth. One that had a semi-tangible body. After a few hours of travel he realized he’d lost his fully corporeal shape. Thankfully, it made it so he didn’t have to breathe and also seemed to protect him from the various energies being blasted through the space around him.

After a few days, the Cloud Swallowing Thunder Eel turned its head and they started zooming towards a star. The path wasn’t direct and they moved towards a small yellow dot. As they grew closer, that dot grew into a full sized planet and in just moments they were slowing down to crash against an atmosphere. Only when he had a planet for a close up reference did Sage realize how fast they were moving, like a true bolt of lightning. The atmosphere itself didn’t really stop them, it was the electromagnetic field that interacted with their strange electrical bodies. It didn’t stop them, merely slowing their travel like the air for a spacecraft during re-entry. The beast carried him down towards the ground and unceremoniously spit him out atop a mountain sized pile of sand.

After depositing him, the Cloud Swallowing Thunder Eel spun around and then crackled back through the air and out of the atmosphere once more. Only at that point did Sage realize he had no idea how he was going to get back. He’d figured he was going to be taking some sort of Transportation Formation like he’d seen before, but now he was at a loss. Did they spend all that energy just to deport me to another planet?

Then he felt a buzz coming from the golden token in his pocket. He brought it out and the previously blank surface suddenly had a large number displayed upon it that held the characters for ‘108’. He took a few steps and suddenly felt a subtle force drawing him back towards where he came from. He took a few steps in another direction and the force shifted. So, a tracking beacon and a timer? Guess I have to be back on this spot in 108… somethings from now.

He soon learned it wasn’t minutes or hours. That left him certain it was counting down the days until the next day came and the number didn’t change. When the next day came and went, he grew worried. If not days, what does it track? Do I have to collect or kill something to count it down?

He was currently traveling through a massive desert towards where he’d seen signs of civilization when the Cloud Swallowing Thunder Eel was approaching the planet. From afar the planet looked yellow and as they got closer, Sage saw the majority of it was covered with yellow sand, with small patches of purple water and bluish vegetation. To the north of the giant desert he’d landed in, was one of those blue patches of vegetation with a large grey splotch. The blocky shapes looked to him like either buildings or large rocky canyons. Since every other direction led to empty sand he chose to head towards the water.

The only problem was: everything hurt.