Walking back the way she came with the near mortal walking a few steps ahead, Kaido adjusts the cloth she’d ripped from the door frame of the hole the mortal slept in and covered herself in a basic disguise and struggles to master herself as anger is scattered to herself and everything surrounding her.

  Already she’s slowed the movement of her internal Qi as much as she can, avoiding movements that might catch the eye of someone's passive senses, but the burning core of her cultivation cannot be truly hidden so she can only hope they’re not disciplined enough to maintain their active Qi sense constantly.

  She has no doubt she made the correct decision with what she knew at the time, but regardless of that fact those decisions were wrong.

  Poison artifacts are a known quantity, every few years some scrap of banner bearing the mark of a dead poison sect or a refining kiln is found in some private collection or secret auction. Cultivation manuals are significantly more rare, but not without precedent.

  As they walk down the hall through the thin crowd, surprisingly, the mortal clears her throat.

  “...Your Excellency, I must ask– Forgive m– I– Ugh.” She interrupts herself with an irritated huff and almost completely drops her respectful tone. “Am I just going to die when I get up there or what?”

  Kaido blinks in surprise at the lack of respect, the emotion overpowering any potential anger at the slight.

  “No. I am taking you to be displayed before the elders, where they will judge your fate.” She answers.

  Though she’s never heard of a case with a poison cultivator before, mortals elevating themselves without a sect is not unknown.

  The act of cultivation is to take in and refine the energies of one's surroundings, to exist is to cultivate on some small level. Thus, there have been noted cases of morals completing Qi condensation without a sect, why would poison be an exception? Being in such a poison saturated place it’s practically inevitable.

  “Right, yea. But when I get there are they just going to kill me?” She asks again, with a continued lack of respect. “...Your Excellency." She adds belatedly.

  Kaido considers if she should take offence, but the events of the past few hours and the still aching pains of her injuries mean indignant anger is slow to rise.

  “If I thought they would have you killed I would do it myself.” She says instead.

  More likely, after imprisoning the girl until this brewing ‘revolution’ is dealt with, they’ll interrogate to find how her heart truly points and how she cultivated the Qi she has, determine if there is any risk of a resurgence in poison sects, then cripple her cultivation and have her work as a servant in either the Silver Firmament sect or one of the first order vassal sects.

  But while she’s not sure of the specifics of what they’ll do about the poison Qi residing within her, that scrapyard is a sure thing to note, perhaps more so than the near mortal herself.

  Places suited to the nature of an aspect of Qi will gather it, like how the central water processing plant gathers aqueous Qi in abundance and the synthetic star in the reactor at the core of this station gathers stellar.

  The scrapyard was quite literally the place where things are sent to rot and be harvested, it could just as likely be a natural outcome of the space as an artificial construction. It was only Kaido’s detection of a poison cultivator that made her certain it was an intentional method of gathering Qi.

  But even if it’s unintentional, such a large amount of poison Qi must be dealt with swiftly. Not only is it a hazard to everything around it, the mortal's existence proves exactly how dangerous it is to allow anyone to interact with the substance.

  The mortal does not speak further until they get to the central atrium of this sector and Kaido stops and abruptly steps back, grabbing the back of her one piece garment to halt her as well..

  “Wh–” The mortal begins, but stops herself as she looks in the same direction the cultivator senses the problem.

  More members of the rebel sect, several of them posted in the space and slowly combing over the crowd. They’re right next to the hallway to the tram, with her core burning so bright they’d have to be blind to not sense her at such a close distance were she to attempt passing by them to the tram.

  The sect is certainly on high alert, and while she could dispatch these three in her current state there’s no way she could eliminate an entire sect or run fast enough to get to the tramway.

  But as she considers the problem, she sees the solution. A call box, on the near opposite side of the room to the guards and apparently without a guard of its own.

  New plan formed, she places a hand on the shoulder of her mortal prisoner.

  “Move.”

  Stepping forward, Kaido presses down her fear and for the first time in almost her entire life allows her Qi to lie completely still as she begins walking across the expanse, halfway full of mortals in the early morning.

  She does not move in any way to draw suspicion, barely looking at the guards, and as she gets to the tinted glass walled call box it appears her attempted subtlety was successful.

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  But as she opens the door and is halfway through, she feels more than sees the attention of someone flicker across her. But as the door closes it does not linger, so she dismisses it.To turn one’s attention away from their enemy is to invite death.

  It’s fortunate they’re among mortals, or her own attention on them would certainly give her away, but as every mortal keeps the guards in the corner of their eye even a cultivator’s attention falls into the background.

  Stepping up to the screen, she ignores the screen ordering her to insert some amount of money and taps her sect’s bypass code to avoid paying the toll.

  “They saw you.” The mortal hisses. “They’re gonna–”

  “They did not. Be silent.” Kaido interrupts as, with the last digit of the bypass, the screen flashes black. The second it lights up again she’s punching her master's number into the keypad.

  “No. They did.” The mortal hisses again. “They’re pretending, one ran aw–”

  “Hold your tongue or lose it.” The cultivator hisses back as she finishes entering her masters number. “I can sense their intent. If they had their attention on me I would sense it.”

  Moreso if they’re not cowards and intent to attack her, but even a cultivator's passive attention is easy to detect.

  It takes less than five seconds before the screen flashes white and her master’s face appears.

  “Repo–” He starts, but at the sight of her he cuts himself off. “You found something.”

  Kaido nods, dismissing formality.

  “Yes master. I will give a full report when I return to the sect but I know that at least the Bronze-Banded Fist Sect is in active rebellion, likely a large majority of the second order sects within this sector stand with them.”

  Her master blinks in mild shock.

  “Th–”

  “Furthermore.” Kaido interrupts. “Scrapyard four four seven is an accumulation zone of massive amounts of poison Qi. Enough that I have captured one individual almost through Qi condensation claimed to be cultivated from the space without a clan.”

  As if mentioning the near mortal is an invitation to speak, she’s forced to tighten her grip around the mortal’s shoulder when she opens her mouth and vaguely indicates something happening beyond… the…

  Kaido’s thoughts slow as she sees a small group of orange robed cultivators walk out of a hall. Their appearance causes the mortals to suddenly have somewhere more important to be and are rapidly starting to clear out. Meaning her own intent will soon be detectable if the mortals continue to leave. Thankfully she can sense their intent and it’s clear they’re not even aware of her existence, let alone planning to attack her. But the timing?

  “This is suboptimal.” Her master understates. “I will call to marshal forces to pacify the rebels. Keep the poison cultivator close to hand if possible and return to the sect as soon as you ca–”

  The rest of his words are drowned out by the sound of blaring alarms screaming from all around outside the call box. The sound has Kaido flinch and look around just in time to see the endless holographic advertisements flicker and disappear before they light up again with yellow text on a blood red background saying–

  “Death to the tyrants!” Someone screams the slogan over the intercom. “There’s a silver in the call box! Break your chains!”

  Kaido almost flinches as so much killing intent is directed at her all at once before reflexively drawing her blade to block a stream of gunfire.

  Out the corner of her eye she sees her prisoner drop to the floor, whether it's out of fear of a gunshot or a wound is unclear, but as the endless volleys of gunfire threaten to overwhelm her defences Kaido has no choice but to leap through the shattered window toward the enemy.

  _____

  _-__-_

  –––––

  Glancing up at the ceiling as the intercom gives the signal to begin the revolution all across this sector, Elder Jingwei nods once, removes the secure communication cylinder from his robe, twists the knob on top to broadcast to every one of the rebel sects, then presses the button to send one final message.

  “It’s time. Hold nothing back.” He says calmly, then releases the button and drops it to the floor.

  In this place there are almost no sects not loyal to the revolution. But even three sectors over it’s less than half. But it’s enough.

  As he steps away, Jingwei keeps a passive mask over his face walking down the line of mortals he’s hired for this most vital purpose, looking past the mirrored glass of their gas masks and into their eyes.

  Coming to a stop at the end of the inspection, he gives a longer look at the leader of this band where he stands at a genuinely admirable attempt at an attention, flamethrower barely a hundredth of a degree off of perfection.

  “Are your men ready?”

  The man nods once.

  “Yes, your Excellency. At your command.” He says back, his voice buzzing slightly as it passes through the metal diaphragm.

  The elder looks away, feeling the red ribbon tied around his neck marking him as a member of the ‘revolution’ as he does, then follows slowly behind as the mortals ignite their flamethrower’s pilot lights and jog into the scrapyard.

  Closing the door, he watches from the entrance for a moment, listening to the radio chatter as the mortals talk through the strategy they’ve come to that will allow them to set this place alight the most quickly.

  Then, after a few moments and the go order comes through, Jingwei senses them begin their work.

  He can feel the Qi infused alchemical concoction that fills their flamethrowers splatter on the metal, ignite, and spread. As it does, the slightly shimmering flames billow a black smoke so thick it eats the light surrounding it.

  That fire grows, so quickly it causes calls of alarm throughout the mortals as smoke rapidly fills the room.

  Jingwei takes a deep breath.

  He feels the vital Qi extracted from the dying gasps of thousands enter his lungs and flow smoothly into his Qi network, and he finally allows the silver facade covering his core to be consumed.

  The fire has spread up several of the enormous piles of metal, the flickering tongues shift through a rainbow of colors as the refined toxins burn into miasma, casting off the final vestiges of the material and becoming an expression of pure poison.

  Jingwei casts out his senses into the cloud as he hears the mortals cries of alarm and pain be reduced to dying coughs, bodies and souls consumed as the smoke seems to writhe in the air.

  He reaches out, searching through the miasma and toxins to the center, the core that must be here by virtue of coming to be in this place.

  Then he finds it, and as it looks back he smiles in satisfaction as he looks upon it, and it looks back.

  It’s hungry.

  The false elder feels his lips stretch to a triumphant grin so wide his molars touch the warm smoky air.

  The Gu. His Gu, a creature of pure poison Qi built around a shard of his very soul, opens one glowing green eye as tall as himself while similarly colored lightning flashes throughout its body.

  “Soon…” He whispers, though doing so makes no more sense than talking to himself. “Very soon.”

  Finally the scrapyard’s sensors detect the fire only after the entire room is ablaze, and at once hundreds of heavy fans kick on to remove the smoke and cycle the air with pure nitrogen so hypothetical emergency response teams can come in, or delay when the floor would start melting.

  But this fire does not burn with air.

  Jingwei feels his Gu being pulled into the fans, drawn ever closer to the station’s atmospheric systems.

  Before his masterstroke there were thousands of completely separate atmospheric systems, but through great effort to ‘modernize’ he spent decades linking as many together as possible, more than enough that when his Gu is done with the third of the station it’s currently connected to, getting to the remainder is childish.

  Now all that’s separating his apotheosis from the station is a fifteen step process of decontamination and purification, one of the most advanced atmospheric purifiers on the station.

  The creature in human skin takes another deep breath of the poison Qi as he watches one of the mortals he came in with begin to melt into a black goo underneath his flamesuit.

  But it was designed for mortal toxins.

  His Gu swirls through the air, coiling and writhing like the serpent it is.

  He’ll give the filters ten minutes, just enough time for the coming chaos to fully take hold.

  Just as he planned.

  Jingwei takes another breath as he feels his Gu’s corrosion make something within the first phase of air filtration give way.

  And he laughs.