Elder Cultivator

A bowstring released, shooting an arrow made of light into a star. Far away, an arrow shot out of another star. If someone had been able to observe both locations at once, they might have been impressed, but Anton wasn’t.

It wasn’t getting any better. At the moment, he was more or less just telling the second star to shoot an arrow of energy. The initial arrow dropping into the star in front of him didn’t matter at all. Unfortunately, Anton wasn’t sure if it was a conceptual issue or something he actually couldn’t do. Though he was a proponent of the idea that there was very little a cultivator couldn’t do with the right knowledge or enough power- perhaps they could do anything in theory- that didn’t mean every cultivator could potentially do everything.

Each individual had their own personality, environment, thought processes. What they could accomplish might not be the same as others who practiced their same cultivation method, no matter how closely all parties followed the core of the method. That was the nebulous idea of ‘talent’ and ‘affinity’.

Anton wasn’t even quite certain what he was trying to do. Was it spatial manipulation? Energy entanglement? Ultimately, it was to be another method to extend his range. Situations like taking down Sudin weren’t just going to present themselves to him. Normally, his range was far less without some sort of conduit like the Tides of the World.

The actual conduits were within himself more than within his bound stars. Maybe he would have to shoot through himself. That was… not something Anton would be attempting. It simply didn’t feel right to him, regardless of whether it was something that could be accomplished.

He was quite aware of how few stars he had bound compared to the region around him. That was why he was pushing towards the next step. Exactly how long it would take was uncertain, but potentially soon, within the next century, or it could be a handful. No longer than that, if he was successful.

Anton hated to compare himself to Everheart, but it could be at a vaguely similar age that the man reached Domination. It was a shame the old geezer hadn’t returned to the lower realms. A man like that was never off guard, always knowing everything. But Anton’s alternate path had clearly been very confusing to the man. Most likely he’d built up his knowledge on that topic now. Even his advancement to Domination might have been non typical, though the man still kept an air of mystery around him so their information was limited.

Several more shots into the star, which Anton attempted to replicate at the other end. They just never came out so snappy. Probably because they weren’t really doing anything. Perhaps he should have focused on his other methods that already worked… but he wanted something more instantaneous. And there was no reason he couldn’t have both methods.

Maybe Three Squeaks would have some insights. The tiny archer was a great student, and he’d been around long enough that Anton couldn’t just assume he knew everything Three Squeaks did. Yes, it would be good to visit. And then he could focus on something besides archery training for a while. Though of course, he wasn’t going to take a day off. He’d just limit himself to a set amount.

The number of populated planets the Lower Realms Alliance found once they committed to going to every star was both quite high and yet extremely limited. Most people they found had not expanded to space travel. Those that had were mostly constrained to their systems. Estimates ranged between one civilization for every few hundred stars, going as infrequent as one per five thousand. Which would still be quite a large number over the whole region, merely numbering in the hundreds instead of thousands.

But split among the whole population of the Lower Realms Alliance, even if they had found them all at once it wouldn’t take all that long to contact each and every one. Properly, of course. It wouldn’t take long after finding them to send a single ship or a probe, but it was important to make a good impression.

If they strictly wanted the best impression, they would probably send Aerona. But that was a lot of distance to cover for one person, and it would reveal a rather limited picture of their alliance. Of course, she still did spend most of her time traveling from one place to another. Half the time she had Devon with her, though it wasn’t so much for safety as for companionship. She was strong enough to survive on her own, even if she wasn’t much of a fighter. She could at the very least keep herself from being attacked or flee. She had a good ship for that. And as an Enrichment cultivator, even if she was very much not focused on combat, she could easily take down Life Transformation cultivators. The only danger would be if there were those on alternate paths, but even then she would be able to detect aggression long before she was actually in danger.

Her methods were a little less personal than they had once been, at least for the very first contact. What she would do was gently blanket the target planet in her energy. Then she effectively introduced herself and asked a bunch of questions.

The answers were provided more by her technique than any individual. It wasn’t mind reading so much as an advanced level of insight.

After her peaceful greeting, indicating she came from another system in the lower realms, she asked her first question.

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How did people feel about people from the upper realms?

Whether the general consensus was hostility, servility, or a mix she could interpret that to determine if they were occupied, planted by the Exalted Quadrant, or had been recently invaded. She kept to the ‘western’ territory and thus anticipated no interaction with the Trigold Cluster.

After that, she would mix up her questions. If people had a negative attitude towards the upper realms, she would try to determine how they felt about the idea of her. If people were amenable or even neutral, she would try to determine if they were unified or not. That was important, because she wanted to set up in-person meetings where she could really talk and if various different people thought they were the most important? She had to determine how to meet with them all.

Sometimes people would meet together, others might not coexist in the same room as others. In which case, she had to pick an order. One that would least offend those she didn’t wish to offend. If certain factions were amenable to meet, assessing their relative strength was important. She could meet with them secretly if they were weak, or openly if they were strong. But there were always worries about what others would think, and how they would react.

But to Aerona, that was just how things were done. It was the flow of cultivation. Just like others engaged themselves in combat, creation, bureaucracy, or any number of other fields, her area was diplomacy. So she was not timid with her choices. After all, showing up and then pondering her decisions for too long also sent a message. Only occasionally did she worry about causing a war of some sort. Once or twice, she suggested the Alliance support a certain faction, at least defensively.

Other times, things were so entangled that the planet or system had to be left alone with the bare knowledge that others were out there. Long term observation might be the only solution to a peaceful coexistence in the future.

And sometimes the planets were in part or in whole controlled by the Exalted Quadrant factions and she had to assess their combat potential, for others to deal with.

Aerona didn’t like that, but she took solace in the fact that the rest of the Alliance didn’t either. If they ever grew to enjoy battle more than they ought to, then their alliance might be failing in its core tenets. Not that there couldn’t be a certain satisfaction to be gained in securing safety.

Just leaving them wasn’t an option. The upper realms had shown time and again that they were not willing to leave them alone. Repeated invasions, and sending their lower realms minions to cause chaos. And Aerona could always count on people like Devon to extract the innocents from such places. There were rarely ever situations where all the people were of one mind. Even the actual hiveminds within the Alliance had different thoughts on things, both between hiveminds and within them.

Far too often, Aerona found a certain pattern. It had been discovered by Anton before her, but it was a truth that held on all scales. It was a pattern that appeared in anything from realm to realm all the way to between systems, planets, countries, cities, or individual people. Conflict between neighbors caused not by irreconcilable differences but by a lack of resources or the threat of a third party or both. Fortunately the invasion at the end of the last cycle had not been too devastating as the upper realms had focused on the ‘problem areas’, but there were still worlds rebuilding.

Tenoun’a and Shrenn were the prime examples, though there were more. Neighboring planets that had been part of a greater whole, and that had had enough for their people. The devastation from the upper realms left them resistant to others and desperate for scraps stolen from their own brethren.

Aerona thought she was pretty good at handling those situations, though unfortunately she couldn’t carry enough food to feed one or two worlds with her. Thus, there were occasionally immediate issues she had trouble resolving. And other times she coordinated an exchange of necessities between opposite sides of the planet that the locals simply couldn’t accomplish, because they couldn’t circumnavigate a planet in minutes.

She was always happy to resolve problems. Yet for every number of places that she had a peaceful resolution, sometimes things would only be resolved with war. Either letting them settle their differences through violence, or having the Alliance participate directly. Aerona wished she could just force everyone to stop, but even if she knocked out the entire planet- something beyond her abilities- they wouldn’t suddenly change their minds. They’d just add her as another threat.

Alright, so there was once or twice that overwhelming a group of people had cowed them enough to actually listen. But more often than not, it just annoyed them. It might have been better if she slaughtered some, given the violence that was core to older cultivator philosophies. Sometimes, a show of strength in the wrong way didn’t accomplish what she might want.

Though the vast majority of cases were peaceful, others still existed. She hated to bring war to the Alliance in what could have been a time of peace… but having the option of when and how to engage was very useful for their alliance. They could afford to wait a few years while resolving one thing or another. And a single planet or a small cluster of systems simply couldn’t stand up to the forces the Alliance could send. Even if it took a great amount of resources to go a hundred or a hundred and fifty lightyears, everyone agreed it was better than letting the groups grow more powerful.

And the only conflicts that were truly unavoidable were when the Exalted Quadrant controlled planets either directly or through subterfuge. Rather than thinking of it as going to war with them, it was more like continuing an ongoing war that they had started and perpetuated.

Independent groups simply wouldn’t be able to cause them trouble for decades, and that was if they developed long distance space travel rapidly. Some of those were left alone for later, when someone like Aerona or others who could assess a planet as a whole could come back and determine if the general sentiment had shifted somehow. Even with cultivator’s long lives, it happened.