Text: UN: lan.furen

[noenvy]

There is a bit of a matter that I would like to ask the public to help clarify. It's in regards to Jiang Cheng, er, Sect Leader Jiang. Or, maybe Jiang Wanyin. Whichever you might know him by.

If you don't know him, just remember that he is usually angry, only knows how to shout at people and is generally stubborn.

Now, with that in mind, does he resemble this cat?



A yes or a no is all I need. You see, he insists he does not, but I? I know better. Let's settle this disagreement with your dear opinions.

Comments

[noenvy]

If you balance yourself and work with a partner very little. Having the potential for a golden core also mitigates a lot as long as you're careful.

The potential damage when unregulated is immense, however. I would never recommend it as a viable path unless you have no other choice. In the end, I died a terrible death from backlash due to it.

[He can't help but sigh a little. Not about his death, that was something that was a given. But, at the lack of choices, he had suffered then. In truth, he never would have even used it if he hadn't been forced. But, he did not want to die, and to not die required controlling resentful energy.]

[wooden_one]

[That reminded him...]

You were going to draw what you remembered of the array...and tell me what you remembered about dying.

[He takes the plans and puts them in a neat stack...and promptly leaves them on the couch because why not?

Then he draws the blank paper and pen he'd prepared earlier closer.]

[noenvy]

Ah yes!

[He reaches over to take the paper and the pen, he was still a bit awkward with pens but he gets a close approximation, at least as much as he can remember.]

There's not really much to dying. I had made a powerful tool full of resentful energy, hundreds of years of it. I destroyed it and it backlashed on me. Fierce ghosts and spirits ripped me to shreds.

But, that's the sort of end you expect with demonic cultivation.

[He spoke like it was nothing as if it happened to someone else, but it was a lie to say it didn't bother him on some level. He had just accepted it a while ago.

[wooden_one]

[He was studying the paper very carefully...but then he looks up with a frown.]

...perhaps. [After all, if one were to play with fire, one should expect to be burnt at some point and yet...]

That doesn't mean it should have happened to anyone.

[After all, that seems like an awfully painful way to be killed.]

[noenvy]

Maybe, what's done is done though.

[Even though he completely felt he deserved that awful violent end, there was no reason to dwell on what happened. It was done and past, talking or thinking about it would never change it.]

The important thing is that I was at peace when I died and had moved on from this world. A soul such as that can't simply be found easily. There's no way to summon it, but you can with a sacrifice summon. The one performing the ritual offers up their body to the spirit with demands. The spirit, in turn, needs to do these bidding or else be destroyed and removed from the reincarnation cycle forever.

[wooden_one]

[There were a lot of words he wanted to say about it still...and yet, if the person it happened to has accepted it then who was he to drag it out again?

So instead, he focused on the drawing.]

What were the demands?

[noenvy]

The only demands such a sacrifice warrants, revenge!

[He delivered the statement rather dramatically.]

He wanted his entire family murdered, which I can't blame him for. They were quite abusive.

[And, quickly he added as he realized how that sounded.]

Ah! But I did not kill them. They happened to die from circumstances while I was around, it counted as far as the curse was concerned.

[wooden_one]

Circumstances.

[He says it very flatly. What sort of circumstances!? But then he frowns down at the array on the paper because...he should focus and not let himself be dragged along.

He ran his fingers over the lines.]

Simply reversing the effects wouldn't be of any help to anyone... [He sounded thoughtful and yet it wasn't a question. Reversing the effects would probably harm the person beside him, after all.] Who had created this?

[noenvy]

I don't know how you would reverse it. The array needs to be drawn in your blood.

[Enough of it to bleed out, it was a really gruesome desperate last stand thing to do.]

I don't know who the original creator was. It's very old, I only found records of it's use a few times in the past several hundred years. All I did was learn about it from those who had died, and old texts I put together. A lot of the sources did not even know the original ritual, or at least not all of it.

I'm rather proud I priced it together so well.

[wooden_one]

[Without saying anything, he pulled a piece of blank paper over. He draws a different array, one that requires slow, careful and above all, precise lines. When it's done, he slides it over to Wei Wuxian.]

If it's drawn on most talismans, it will cause its function to become reversed. Though with anything drawn with blood it could become problematic.

[And if anything, using it on something meant to summon may very well just banish.

That being said...]

It is impressive but maybe you shouldn't have done it. Some things are lost or forbidden for a reason.

[Yes he is scolding you!]

[noenvy]

[He looked at it with interest, what a useful sort of talisman, to be able to reverse most anything. He would have to remember it for later.]

It's hard to say, since the nature is to sacrifice yourself to a spirit perhaps the reverse would be sacrificing a spirit for yourself?

[This ritual did require a trade after all.]

You sound like my old teacher. Maybe I hadn't thought about it too deeply at the time. I was trying to see what I could do.

[wooden_one]

[Up until this point, he'd mostly just been looking at the papers, but he leaves those for now to look right at you.]

Wanting to know how far you can go isn't a bad thing in itself. But not tempering that will get you into trouble. Forbidden techniques are forbidden because the cost of failure and the possibility of abuse is very high. Unless put in a place with no other choice, it's best to stay away from them.

I hope you have learnt that much at least.

[noenvy]

[he couldn't help but laugh a little, it was the sound of the guilty.]

I know that lesson very well....

Don't worry, I am not so wild with my research anymore. Or my practicing. The corrupt path is not the one I have to walk alone anymore.

[wooden_one]

[...look. With the sort of disciples he has, he can recognize that sort of laugh.

He frowned somehow looking both annoyed and a little worried. Right. No doubt, that death this person had mentioned had no doubt been related to this.]

...as long as you know better now. [He just wished you could have learned it without such a high price. He turns back to the paper.] The past is the past. It cannot be changed. But the future is yet unwritten. Don't make the same mistakes as before.

[noenvy]

Of course. My mistakes are carved quite well, they are not things I intend on repeating.

[And he meant that. Those things were in the past, and his future was too promising to jeopardize with bad decisions.]