"Thought Or Telepathy"
"Character Communication"
"Loud Speaking"
"Emphasis 'On' A Word."
Madara: A New Journey
Madara cannot stand being forced into a situation, being imprisoned and limited is a sign of the weak and helpless. He is not weak or helpless, but the others are, and he cannot stand them being forced to submit to the constraints of this stupid little test that doesn't give them any chance to beat it.
Following that, his open hand that he had extended in front of himself slams shut. The water in front of him distorts as if space itself is warping. An instant later and Ruby and the rest appear into existence right in front of him in the same sorry state.
The water around is pushed aside by a powerful force and forms a bubble around all of them, ending the struggle entirely. The bright light shines past Madara and through this new clearing in the water, landing on the soaking bodies before him.
They don't know what has just happened, they don't know how far they've just travelled. They were struggling one minute, and then the next, the water was pushed aside to reveal a shadowy figure sitting down with a heavenly light behind said figure.
Looking up, they see the light dissipate and the figure standing up. "Looks like you made it." They recognize this voice as Madara and relax.
Misaki is worrying about Mika, her daughter is in bad shape, cuts cover a majority of her body as if her skin is about to be peeled off. "Is this the end?" She asks in a trembling voice. She's pissed, children getting hurt are the bottom line, unforgivable!
Madara nods and slowly walks a few steps back into the light and vanishes. This momentarily startles them, but most of them have faith in Madara and understand that he is simply showing them the way.
In an unknown area within this bizarre realm is an endless forest, countless deadly beasts travel within this forest like a fish in the water. This is their home, their domain, clearly existing here as long as the forest itself.
Accompanying the forest is a cloudy and murky sky that creates a depressing and moist atmosphere similar to a rain forest, it isn't raining, but it always feels like it is. A thick fog covers the grounds and all over the sky, flashing lights burst forth creating a sharp contrast against the dull grey.
These flashes are the first groups of people to make it through the fountain test, they appear in the sky and have to survive the substantial fall down. Most have their means, but some are not so well prepared and can only hope that the fall is broken by the large leaves of the rain forest.
A man's eyelids open up from his sleep. This man is a mortal, he isn't a cultivator, he's not the only mortal to try the test, hundreds try, but they all die each time. This one is the first to make it this far, into slaughter forest.
In his weary and groggy state, he's forgotten the pain in his body from when he crawled up the endless staircase, tearing apart and grinding his joints, from having his bones and muscles torn from pushing the door open, having his some of his skin peeled off by the power of the fountain.
The blowing wind acts like the cushions on a bed and he makes to yawn, but before he can, his vision regains clarity. This isn't the time to be sleeping, he's about to die, he turns to looks down and the ground is quickly approaching. He curses in his mind, this test has been nothing but torture.
He uses his belt and tears some cloth with his teeth to tie to the belt, making it longer. He ignores the pain coming from his body and his expression turns even more serious. He smashes into the trees canopy and throws his belt to the nearest branch.
The leaf doesn't stop him much but with a swing of his hand, the belt catches one of the many branches. Pain explodes when his arm snaps out of its socket and his momentum slows before the belt snaps into two almost like his arm. "Fuck!"
His body ragdolls on some more branches before hitting the ground with a thud. It seems like he's dead, his body remains motionless and bloody, but then a desperate gasp jolts him awake. "I'm still alive..." This is the first time he's ever thought to be alive a bad thing, he'd rather die at this moment.
After laying there for a few moments, his drive to live resurrects. "Dammit, I'm not going to die, I'm going to prove everyone back home wrong!" He drags his body to sit up against a tree with a painful groan.
There is a jagged branch sticking out of his right leg and it feels like a few rips are broken. "What is this forest, what chances do I have here?" After removing the branch from his leg and bandaging it with his clothes, he fashions a cane out of a nearby branch that was snapped off from his fall.
Light continues to flash above as he makes his way through the forest. He doesn't know what he has to do or how many tests after this there are, he can only push forward.
This person is Muranaka Dai, a man of thirty-three years of age. All his life, he's had dreams of being a powerful cultivator, a king among the powerful. These dreams are so real, he swears they are real if it wasn't for the fact that he wakes up afterwards.
His dreams always differ, expect one. In this dream, he is standing above a massive continent of unknown size, he is a sun, a powerful sun looming over the lands and all beneath cannot fathom his existence and can only worship him. A powerful feeling of accomplishment, pride, and arrogance fills his body during the dream.
In the next instant, the dream shifts, the surroundings change and a singular figure in black arrives in front of him. Arrogance and dread appear and then, then he wakes up and feels shame at his current self.
He came here looking to become a cultivator to make that dream a reality, to become the sun that stands above all, but favour doesn't fortune him, he grew up with no talent for cultivation, but he did always have a powerful body, which has allowed him to survive until now.
As he adjusts himself, he takes notice of a token attached to his waist, he didn't notice it earlier because of the situation, but it's a rather shiny copper-like token, smooth like jade. Before he can do anything, he jolts to the sound of a twig snapping to his left.
From within the thick brush, shrouded in darkness, a cultivator looks at him, with sharp devilish eyes. The man has blood splatters on his face and a token that is silver in colour. The man cackles after seeing the injured mortal in front of him and charges at him. "Let me help you up!"
Dai blocks and closes his eyes to accept his fate, but, nothing happens. He opens his eyes only to see that the cultivator had face-planted into the tree behind him, a small purple snake slithering out from the cultivator's robes and over his leg.
Dai laughs nervously. "A snake, haha." After looking around for more wildlife, he pushes the person off him and grabs the token he saw earlier. "What do I do with this?" He guesses that it's a part of this test, but in what way he doesn't know.
He gets an idea and puts the token next to his own, they both glow and the silver one is sucked into his own, changing it's colour to a darker silver. "So, I guess it needs other tokens to progress maybe, bizarre. Then that would reward killing."
The idea is terrifying and sends a shiver down his spine. If everyone he saw in the second test is here, then a grand slaughter will take place. He's in no condition to kill anyone, let alone cultivators that can kill him with a flick. "I'll have to scavenge." There are also creatures like that snake that he has to worry about.
In summary, he's fucked. However, away from this woefully unfortunate man, in a completely different realm of unknown size with a sky of earth, a cave system, only the cave is so large that it could fit countless planets within, is a blaring sound vibrating all throughout.
This sound is coming from small to massively large pipes that are all over the exterior and interior of the cave. These pipes lead deeper into the cave. The sound is not random, it is clearly a musical piece, foreboding, majestic, evil, and angelic, like a one-winged angel cast from heaven.
The sound reverberates off the walls of the cave and penetrates every inch of this realm, there are no inhabitants insights but those that do exist here have certainly grown accustomed to this sound
At the centre of this realm is another much more normal-sized cave, all the pipes lead to this area, many grand palaces decorate the area for millions of kilometres. A man kowtows outside this centre cave that is shrouded in darkness with fervour and absolute respect.
"Seventh Disciple Gong greets Supreme Master!" The man waits for an hour and hears nothing, but he still stays kowtowed on the ground, he would do this for as long as he lived if he never heard anything.
The song of the organ is still playing, but then it stops with a long breath being released from inside the cave. "What news?" An incredibly majestic and benevolent voice descends with a golden light.
The man looks up to see two piercing golden eyes within the darkness. "Master, he's entered the Glacier Fate Alliance this cycle but shows no signs of awakening. I've instructed those Alliance Elders to make sure he can't cultivate in this life."
Sweat forms on the man's forehead, even though he is the seventh disciple, his master still terrifies him with just a look.
Despite his cultivation level, it feels like his secrets are exposed in that golden gaze and a single wave of a finger would result in his death, that is what his instincts tell him would happen if he ever got on the bad side of his master.
The golden eyes turn into the darkness and the keys of the organ are lightly pressed with the thunderous sounds in the distance returning in a lazy fashion. "Cultivation is hard in this world...resource, treasure, spell, pick one!"
Gong wells up in excitement when he hears that. "Master, do you have anything that can help me form an essence?" Although passing up spells and treasures is hard to do, neither can compare to the fortune an essence can give him, over his long life, he's failed to even grasp an elemental essence.
A small dot of light comes from the cave and stops in front of him. A rich fire explodes from a small light. Gong kowtows on the ground when he realizes what's in front of him. "Thank you, master!" He never expected to receive a fire essence seed.
"Go into closed-door cultivation in the northern fire temple sect for two thousand years, if you can reach the peak of Nirvana Shatterer and complete this essence I'll teach you a technique, perhaps in ten thousand years you can pass the heaven's blight and reach the third step!"
Gong puts away the fire essence and clasps his hands. The idea of reaching the legendary third step of cultivation causes him to salivate, but he knows it's no small bridge to cross, it's nearly impossible and his chances of dying are very high, but those are the risks he's willing to take.
He was born in this world, unlike the oldest three disciples who came with their master to this world uncountable years ago. He doesn't know how rare the third step is in their homeworld, his master only had a gloomy expression when he asked and left him with these words. "There is always someone, much stronger."
However, if he can complete this essence, learn his master's technique, and successfully pass the five heaven's blight, he may have a chance to be among the truly powerful, only then would he be in his master's eyes, it may sound simple, but his chance of survival is a percentage less than ten.
"Junior obeys! I bid master farewell!" With those words, ripples form from under his feet and he disappears to enter closed-door cultivation many planet lengths away from his current location.
If nothing goes wrong, then he'll be there for at least two thousand years, things have never gone wrong, everything is controlled by his master in this realm, all sects are united, the powerful are afraid, and the only separate force is the lower realm cultivators who neither have the cultivation or the method to reach this realm.
Even when considering the man he's been in charge of keeping tabs on for ten thousand years, although he doesn't know the details in full, that man has been reincarnating for millions of years and has never shown any signs of awakening his memories, whoever he is, but why does he still have a bad feeling?
Back in the rainforest-like jungle, a cultivator is covered in blood and is running through the forest as he screams at the top of his lunges. "Little devils, you dare sneak attack me!" He turns out and hits a bag at his waist and something pops out.
With a flick, this small object expands into a net and shoots towards the attackers. A woman rushes at the net with a very long katana and it only takes a second for it to easily slice the net in half. "What kind of treasure is that?!" The cultivator cries at the loss. That net was able to capture core formation experts with ease.
He dodges to the side when more people come out from behind but when he does a young girl with the highest cultivation of the group jumps down from the tree above and throws a small green snake at him. He reaches out and grabs the snake. It hisses and bites into his arm before he can crush it.
After killing the snake, he jumps away from everyone, only to stumble when he lands. The surroundings get blurry and seem to distort before him. He can't stand anymore and falls down as the world continues to rotate more violently. "Poison?!"
Before he knew it, these people showed up and attacked him without warning. Despite his higher cultivation level, they've chased him relentlessly and gave him no chance to take out his best treasures, not that it would matter with that sword treasure that easily cut through anything he had.
He tries to crawl away but two feet walk into view and cut off his path. He struggles to look up at the male figure in front of him. "Lacking, but this should suffice." Madara looks down at the man at his feet and holds out his hand towards Misaki as the blade in her hand is yanked away into his grasp.
He places the katana against the back of the cultivator's necks and calls out. "Kill him." The one who threw the snake at the cultivator from the tree drops down and walks over to take the blade posed to slice the man's head off.
"Please don't kill me!" The cultivator cries with snotty tears.
"Kill him, Ruby. Imagine this man here, is the one who killed your family, don't you hate him, don't you want to kill him?" Madara whispers only to her, the other cannot hear this at all.
"But, he's not the one who killed them..." Ruby says this equally as silently as her hands tremble.
"He's not, but he'd kill you if it benefits him. He may not have killed your family, but perhaps another family, either already or in the future if it benefits him. You could stop him from doing that, from killing you, those you hold dear, and another family. With a simple swing of the blade, you can stop so much pain."
Ruby's face losses the lack of resolve as her grip on the blade tightens and swings down, severing the man's head from his torso with ease. Her breathing is laboured after the deed is done. "Good job, Ruby, I'm proud of you!" Madara rests his hand on her shoulder to comfort the shivers of a first kill and takes the blade away.
He throws it back at Misaki and takes the token off the corpse to combine it with his own. It turns a solid golden when he does.
"There shouldn't be much more now right?." Hiroi comes over to ask while looking at the decapitated cultivator with nausea.
Madara shakes his head. "We've taken thirty-five tokens in total, each token advances another in rank, represented by a metal element. The higher the rank, the more difficult it is to advance, the more tokens you need." Madara looks at his dark gold token and then the light gold tokens of everyone else.
He looks at Kaba and continues. "If that is our observation, then we can assume we either need to reach the last rank token to pass or that there's a time limit, and the rank of the token will determine a reward, most likely related to sect ranks. And those that don't have tokens, if they aren't already, will die."
Stopping his explanation, he places his hand on the cultivator, something he's done in front of them after each kill, they haven't asked why he is doing this though. Fiddling around with something for a moment, he stands up. "You've learned how to work together and kill, handle yourselves alone for a while."
Not a single noise is made when he suddenly disappears. "I will not save you if you get into trouble while I'm gone." Only his words echoing in the wind linger around. A piece of paper drops in front of Ruby. "But, if you are about to die, tear that paper, it only has one use, but it will kill everyone around you."
The words are cruel, but he's already taught them how to survive and work together, but most importantly how to pick a target and assess a losing battle. If they listen to his instructions, they'll survive this forest. He's also given them a life-saving treasure.
Their cultivation has already begun to breakthrough, but for Madara, it's not that simple. He's been collecting the cultivation from the cultivators they've killed so far, but it's far from enough. He needs vast storages of cultivation to be released all at once to force his body to resist the infection and refine his body at the same time.
To do that, he needs thousands of the cultivators in this forest to die for him, and so, in this forest that encourages slaughter, there is going to be a true slaughter. Madara's rampage is about to begin. A terror induced nightmare, a true slaughter doesn't need a good reason, it simply happens at a whim of a malevolent force.
During the last couple hours, Muranaka Dai has already managed to snatch up a few more tokens through lucky encounters. His injury is still bad, but he fashioned a cane, splint, and bandaged himself, allowing him to move around a bit.
Dai's luck has always been surprisingly high, despite appearances. The fact that he can survive falls from the sky, complete trails that aren't meant for mortals, when he is, in fact, a mortal, and even pick up tokens without a struggle when he is wounded so badly is proof of his extraordinary luck.
His sense and instincts are also attuned to dangerous situations, which has allowed him to avoid the detection of nearby cultivators and deadly wildlife. But lately, in the last half-hour, things have gone deathly quiet. He doesn't know what's happening, but he can smell a growing smell of blood.
Even the beasts around every corner have up and disappeared. "This is far to strange to be a coincidence, what's going on?" Dai asks himself as his steps grow even more cautious. Suddenly he hears a ghastly cry like a siren echo through the fog from very far away.
After a few seconds of walking, more screams, but each one is quickly snuffed out, leaving only the reverberation. Despite his better judgement, he goes towards the screams. Walking for what seems like minutes, the screams only grow louder and clearer, they aren't only screams, but cries of help!
"No, NO, Oh god no..." The distant voice trails off with a mortal scream. Dai whole body shakes but keeps walking until his footstep changes in sound, from a firm crunch to a sticky squelch. The ground is covered in blood and other fleshy pieces. The smell is overwhelming.
"What the fuck is it?!" Another voice lets out a grunt. "HELP!" This voice goes silent as well.
"Work together, don't let it get behind..." Another voice is cut short. Dai reaches the source of the noise just as a head falls from the sky and lands in an opening in the forest, with three desperate people standing in the centre and getting back to back in a triangle formation with treasures and spells being thrown at the trees.
Two males, one female. The female takes notice of Dai. "Quick get in the centre and help..." Before she can finish, she's swept off her feet and falls to the ground. "What?" Before she can grasp what's happening, she's being dragged. She digs her nails into the ground to try the resist while crying.
Finger trails are etched into the ground as she's pulled away and yanked out of sight into the foliage of a tree. A hand with long dark claw-like nails comes out of the darkness into her vision and grabs her head. "Why are you doing this?! HELP!" A cry for help comes from the tree, a crunching and tearing sound follows.
The three people, including Dai, watch in sheer terror as a head with a spinal cord still attached falls from the tree along with a ribcage, entrails, and other organs. Blood flows down the tree like a river and an arm hangs down one of the branches barely uncovered by the light.
A sharp snapping sound also comes from the tree. This sound seems to awaken one of the men from the three. This man screams and jumps into the air in the opposite direction. "Monster! Kill them, let me go! My Master will kill you for sure!"
While the man is in the air, he suddenly changes paths when a gust of wind churns the air violently. When Dai and the other man looks over after recovering, they see the man has been impaled through the head with a wood branch and is hanging from another tree with a deformed face and blood dripping down his body.
The other man just stares with a broken and hopeless expression. He drops his guard and falls to his knees, letting the blood soak his clothes. He laughs silently while looking down at himself. "Fuck you..." He says quietly. He pulls out a small knife and cuts his own throat, becoming one with the red surrounding.
Dai falls to his knees as well. He doesn't know what to do, he's going to die, his luck has run out, each of these dozen of cultivator corpses around him could have killed him when alive. He has no chance against something that can slaughter them all.
He waits in shivering terror when he feels something look at him for a moment, but nothing happens and the gaze he felt, doesn't linger. Just as he stands up with nothing in front of him, a loosely bewildered but lazy voice comes from behind. "You're human..."
Dai slowly turns around, almost too afraid to see what's behind. He sees, a normal-looking man, albeit tall and very handsome, but overall, not the seventeen feet tall monster that he had imagined. This can't be the thing killing people! "We need to run, there's some sort of monster!"
"That was me, but calm yourself, I'm not going to kill you." Madara replies as he flicks a piece of the fleshy substance of his finger.
Taking a step back, Dai doesn't believe a word. "You're not going to kill me, why?! Why talk to me?"
Madara sighs. "It serves no purpose to kill you, as for the reason I'm talking with you, I'd say I'm interested in how a human can make it to this place. Did you come through the trials or some other way?"
Dai stares quizzically at him for a moment before replying. "I guess you can just call me lucky, I came from the trials. I saw you earlier in the square, you were the first one to enter the fountain trial! Why are you killing these people? I know we need the tokens, but this..." He looks around at the lake of blood and flesh.
"Lucky..." For the first time since appearing, Madara looks at the man, closely. After a moment, he says. "I doubt it's just that, you are a human though, strange." He looks at the surrounding again. "This, bloodshed, served a purpose. I no longer have a need for the tokens, you can have some because you're lucky."
A huge pile of tokens appear between the two of them, enough to turn any copper token into a platinum token. Dai stares at them in surprise before sighing. "I don't agree with what you did to these people, but I can't afford to not accept! I thank you, today!"
Madara grins. "A pity you don't have any cultivation, why is that?"
Dai frowns. "I have no talent for it, but I won't give up, I'll get stronger in my own way!"
"What a shame, too much of a shame..." He waves his hand to fill his hand with Qi, then takes out a scroll and opens it up, a body is taken out before he puts it away. "I'll give you the foundation of one of the Foundation Establishment cultivators I killed! You'll be among the strongest in the trails."
"What? You can do that! I, I, don't know what to say..." Dai tries to calm his heart but fails. The idea of becoming a cultivator, despite his repeated failures, is too tempting for him to resist. "What do I have to do in return?" He asks between clenched teeth.
"With you, it shouldn't be too difficult. For what I want, I get the feeling that you have extraordinary potential, become my, disciple, for the time being. I may not have a use for a disciple in the future, but you can leave unharmed if that is the case." He waits for the response.
Dai bites his lips looking at Madara in the eyes for but a moment before dropping to his knees and kotowing in the blood, covering his face is a mask of blood. "Master!"
Madara smiles. "Good, you're decisive!" He waves his hand and Qi fills Dai's body. The amount of Qi would normally immediately explode a normal person, but under his control, it takes Dai into the Qi Condensation realm, from the 1st layer to the last. Dai's body erupts with heavenly warmth.
He takes control of the body on the ground. Touching the abdomen as he uses Allheaven Abyss to extract everything to do with cultivation from the man's body. Truthfully, he doesn't have a full grasp of this process, it seems like Allheaven Abyss has a little mind of its own.
The man's body shrinks like a mummy and he pulls out an orb of what looks like flesh, glowing with some sort of energy that takes the shape of the man's head and screams in silence. Madara punches the orb into Dai's abdomen.
Dai immediately explodes into a blood mist, but a second later, it reforms into a new body and a powerful aura comes from the body, the aura of Foundation Establishment cultivator. A small black Truth-Seeking Orb appears in Madara's hand, wrapping around Dai, reforming the same clothes he had on before exploding.
Falling to the ground from the process, Dai remains unconscious. Madara has no idea if his consciousness survived the process. Before he can find out, seven figures appear around the two and all seven look shocked. "What did you do to him?! Answer or die!" The man with the strongest aura demands.
Madara is not surprised at their appearance but they are all vastly more powerful then any cultivator he's met in person. It's exactly what he needs to complete the storage of cultivation for his own foundation. He lets out a vicious smile. The man frowns at the amount of blood in the area. "So be it, kill him!"
Madara: A New Journey