Molting the Mortal Coil

The demon in that chamber of Sage’s mental labyrinth was smashing its hands against the door, trying to break out and overwhelm him with the sharp pain. Sage was no stranger to the pain of losing a limb. Such injuries were so severe that the body basically shut down the sense of pain. Bottling up his sense of pain served a similar purpose. The loss of a major body part was more traumatic than it was life threatening for him. With his healing ability, he could recover from such wounds pretty quickly. With his body’s focus being on other areas, it meant it was no longer powerful enough to regrow limbs and extremities, but it would make it quite difficult for him to die from blood loss.

Now tongueless, Sage swallowed a few healing pills and waited for his body to stabilize from the loss. Once recovered, he returned to his human form for the crafting process and examined the giant forked tongue that had been sitting in stasis for an hour. He made sure it fit the requirements listed for the Heart’s Tongue technique and then went to gather supporting materials. The requirements for materials were quite loose and Sage had a whole planet full of herbs and plants to draw from, so he quickly found suitable items.

He also felt a bit inspired and incorporated his Heavenly Materials in the process. A Heavenly Material was like a seed, when it was provided with enough Qi it grew and multiplied. In most cases it created a form of energy, but some of them created a type of matter. Sage actually had two such materials, the Blue Icesilver and Black Enhydros. The Heart’s Tongue had no need for a metallic material like the Blue Icesilver. It would surely be a pain to always need to expend Qi to merely speak, but he did come up with a use for the Black Enhydros.

Sage drained the blood from the forked tongue and carefully infused it with a replacement fluid. The new fluid was a mixture of the Black Enhydros, Green Lifewater, Moon Honey, and a few other supporting herbs. The Green Lifewater is a Heavenly Material that Sage received from Guan Zhenyan to grow the plants on his Inner World. It carries a small amount of lifeforce and is very good at raising the potency of plants watered by it. The Moon Honey is created by the Silverbees that Sage still has colonies of in the Universe Ring and the Inner World. It was very good at absorbing the qualities of ambient Qi and transferring them to those who consume it. It was a very commonly used mixing medium to bond two other substances. It acted as a ‘glue’ for the other ingredients and combined them into a stable state.

The main, and most difficult, step of creating the Heart’s Tongue was inscribing the many array formations onto its outer surface. Thankfully, this step wasn’t too difficult for Sage as he was a much higher ranked Formation Master than he was a Blacksmith. Using the Anima Print technique, he visualized each of the array symbols with his Spirit Power, creating a sort of mold, then filled it with Qi and stamped it down onto the tongue. Then he refilled the stamp and placed it down again everywhere the symbol repeated itself. After that he switched to the next symbol, creating a new mold and repeating the process. When all the symbols had been stamped onto the tongue the final step was to carve the geometric symbols linking them all. After he stamped or carved a symbol, the black fluid seeps up from inside the tongue, creating a black ink-like outline. By the time he was finished the forked snake’s tongue looked like it had been intricately tattooed with black ink.

With the device complete, the final step was linking up with it. Normally, this would be the most gruesome as it required one to chop off their own tongue, but Sage had already accomplished this part. All it took was to reopen the wound and spill some of his heart’s blood onto the Heart’s Tongue. In this world, the common belief was that the tongue was connected to the heart, and the most pure and core blood essence had a direct path from the heart to the tongue. Given the world that he was from, Sage had a hard time believing any of the strange medical knowledge of this world, but at the same time they could also fly through the sky and throw balls of fire. It made it hard for him to discount any of their knowledge. At the very least their methods led to results, and regardless of how they worked, he only needed to replicate the steps to replicate the result.

There was a sharp pain when the recently completed Heart’s Tongue was pushed into his mouth. He’d reverted to his True Form, as the Heart’s Tongue would not be changing size on its own. The scroll had certain extra steps to shrink down larger beast tongues for use in a human mouth, but Sage didn’t take the extra effort. The tongue came from his own mouth, so why bother wasting more resources. The pain of bonding with the Heart’s Tongue was surprising in that he couldn’t control it. In order to properly integrate it, he had to release that demon from its cell and completely allow it to form a channel directly into his heart and link to his soul. That deep, searing pain reminded him of the years spent with Guan Zhenyan and it also gave him insight into how the Heart’s Tongue worked. With the links that it was forming, he guessed it was something like a transmitter and receiver directly aligned with his soul, translating his intentions directly regardless of the sounds involved.

He could only hope that he hadn’t just opened up a backdoor directly to his soul. Many of the symbols and formations he’d inscribed seemed related to protection so he could only trust in the strength of this device that he’d never heard of before, but that seemed to have a rich and ancient history. Once that searing pain finally died down, Sage couldn’t wait to try it out. He brought out a Vulture Gecko from his Inner World, a creature that was somewhat overlooked now that they weren’t being bred as cavalry mounts. Then Sage started out tentatively, “Hello. Do you understand me?”

The creature was larger than a horse, with the body of a gecko, yet with the wings of a vulture on its back. Complete with ruffled neck feathers and a beak on its head, yet with a bright silver coloring. It tilted its head to the side and then squawked at him, “Who! What!”

“Whoa, is it working? Was that your voice, or am I just imagining it?”

“Yes. Yes. Feed me! Worms, big slippery worms. Crickets, big crunchy crickets. Carcasses, big smelly carcasses.”

Sage made the determination that the Heart’s Tongue was working. The Vulture Gecko was just a simpleton. It wasn’t a surprise. Insects were quite like robots and he was sure if he tried talking to them it would be just as entertaining as talking to a toaster. The Hoplites were already pretty dull and they were the product of his focused attempt to increase intelligence. Most Demonic Beasts had to get very powerful and old to increase their intelligence and have a hope of attaining a human form on their own. The Vulture Gecko was a mutant he created to breed quickly for use as a flying mount, he didn’t care about making them intelligent at the time. Not bothering to talk with the Gecko any longer he sent it back to the Inner World and told some Hoplites to feed it. Then he moved from the Universe Ring and back out to the Chameleon Mantis.

Time for a real test.