Zarziyan - The Price of Ascension

The caravan left the Serpent's Pass behind, but it did not leave the danger. The victory against the Stonefang Bandits was a hollow one, paid for with the blood of their disciples and a significant portion of their medical supplies. A grim mood settled over the company as they pressed northward into a region marked on Captain Jian's map with a single, ominous word: Miasma.

They entered a land under a perpetual grey sky. The healthy, rust-colored rock of the canyon gave way to a sickly, pale landscape where the trees were skeletal and stunted, their branches clawing at the sky like the hands of the dying. A thick, swirling mist clung to the ground, a silent, grey predator that seemed to swallow sound and light. This was the Withering Mists, a place rumored in travelers' tales to be cursed, a land where the very air was poison to the soul.

Within hours, the curse made itself known. It began with the servants and the spiritual beasts. A persistent, hacking cough. A deep, unshakable weariness. They grew pale, their movements sluggish. The disciples, with their cultivated bodies, resisted longer, but they were not immune. By the second day, even the proudest warriors of the Jade Sword Sect looked gaunt, their perfect posture slumping with fatigue, their sharp Qi tinged with a faint, sickly grey.

Lian, laboring at the rear of the caravan, observed this unfolding plague with a cold, detached fascination. With his Primal Sense, he could feel the miasma. It was not a physical poison. It was a form of chaotic, parasitic Qi. It seeped into the cultivators' bodies and attached itself to their orderly meridians, disrupting the flow of their own energy like grit in a finely tuned engine. Their own pure, disciplined Qi, which was their greatest strength, was now their greatest weakness. The more they circulated their energy to fight off the fatigue, the more the miasma spread, twisting their own power against them. Their elegant healing techniques, which relied on the precise application of pure Qi, were useless. Trying to heal with corrupted Qi was like trying to put out a fire with oil.

And Lian... felt nothing.

He breathed in the thick, grey mist, and to him, it felt… familiar. It was a chaotic energy, yes, but it was a pathetically weak, diluted version of the raging tempest he held chained in his Dantian. To his system, which was already a battlefield of warring elemental forces, this external miasma was not a poison. It was barely a seasoning. He felt no fatigue. His strength did not wane. He moved through the sickening mist as if it were the crisp, clean air of his home forest.

His immunity did not go unnoticed. At first, it was subtle. While other servants collapsed, needing to be helped onto the wagons, Lian continued his work, hauling ropes and pushing wheels with the same steady, brutish force. While the disciples' faces grew haggard and pale, his own complexion remained unchanged.

Kael, the brutish foreman, was one of the first to fall ill. His usual sneers were replaced by a constant, rattling cough. He watched Lian with hateful, feverish eyes, unable to comprehend how this "Mule," this simple-minded beast, could remain so unaffected while he, a man of superior standing, was brought low.

The situation grew dire on the third day. Several of the younger disciples were now so weak they could no longer walk, their Qi in such disarray that they had to be placed in the wagons, their breaths shallow and ragged. The caravan's pace slowed to a crawl. Captain Jian was everywhere at once, his face a mask of grim determination, but Lian could see the toll it was taking. The captain was using his own powerful Core Formation Qi to create a protective barrier around the weakest disciples, a constant, draining effort that was slowly chipping away at his own reserves. His aura, once a coiled spring of power, was now frayed at theedges.

This was Lian's opportunity. It was time to move from being an anomaly to being a necessity. He couldn't reveal his cultivation, but he could reveal his immunity in a way that could not be ignored.

The caravan had stopped to tend to a disciple who had collapsed in a fit of violent, Qi-induced convulsions. The healers were helpless, their own energy too corrupted to intervene. The boy was dying. The other disciples looked on with a mixture of pity and fear, keeping their distance, afraid of the chaotic energy radiating from their comrade.

Lian acted. Under the guise of his simple-minded persona, he walked forward, his expression one of dull confusion. "Get back, Mule!" one of the senior disciples, Wei, snapped, his voice weak. "You'll be infected!"

Lian ignored him. He knelt beside the convulsing boy. He looked at the contorted face, the chaotic energy flaring beneath the skin. He reached out a large, dirt-caked hand.

"Don't touch him, you fool!" Wei cried out.

Lian's hand rested on the boy's forehead. He did not channel the Heartwood's life energy. He did not use the lightning's destructive force. He simply opened a sliver-thin channel in his own "Devouring Skin" and did what he did best. He took.

He drew the chaotic, parasitic miasma from the boy's body into his own.

To him, it was like drinking a single drop of muddy water. It was absorbed into the raging ocean of his Dantian and vanished without a trace.

The effect on the disciple was immediate. The violent convulsions ceased. The chaotic flaring of his Qi subsided. His breathing, though still shallow, became regular. He was not healed, but the immediate crisis, the thing that was killing him, was gone. He slumped into a deep, healing slumber.

A stunned, absolute silence fell over the canyon. The disciples stared, their minds unable to process what they had just witnessed. This brute, this simple animal, had touched a boy consumed by a Qi plague and not only remained unharmed but had somehow... stabilized him. It defied all logic, all principles of cultivation.

Lian, for his part, simply looked at his own hand with a puzzled expression, as if surprised by what had happened. He had saved the boy's life, but he had done it in a way that revealed nothing of his true methods. He had performed a miracle and disguised it as a dumb accident.

He was so focused on his act that he didn't see Captain Jian striding towards him until the man's shadow fell over him. The captain's face was no longer just weary. It was a mask of intense, burning suspicion and desperation. He had seen everything. He had seen the impossible.

He grabbed Lian by the shoulder, his grip like iron. He spun him around, forcing Lian to meet his gaze.

"That was not an accident," Captain Jian said, his voice a low, dangerous growl. "Your strength is not natural. This plague does not touch you. You just absorbed the miasma from my disciple as if it were water. The charade is over."

He leaned in closer, his eyes boring into Lian's. "I will ask you one more time, and if you answer me with another grunt or a single word, I will run you through where you stand, caravan be damned. What... are... you?"