I'm glad my Ahura theory panned out, though I'm less glad that we're about to die.
Before you can drop into a fighting stance, Ahura appears right in front of you, traversing the intervening distance with a single step. He looks down at you with a sneer, weighing you down with the pressure of his full attention.
Cao’er squeaks in a panic. You feel your limbs becoming heavy: his strong qi is of an oppressive nature, and you struggle to shake it off.
There is a great disturbance of qi somewhere within the building, swirling. Raging. Scorching. It is oppressive and overbearing, and the deeper you make your way into the temple’s innermost chambers, the more adherents and worshippers you see laying splayed out on the floor, rendered unconscious by the overwhelming power burning at the temple’s heart. You doubt that you could have made it this far unchallenged in normal circumstances, but tonight…
...
At the center of it all is a pillar of flame, pure white in colour, stretching from the ground to the ceiling. It is the cause of the sweltering heat in the chamber, yet you sense that it is not the source of power that you felt. Around the flame stand the five Amesha Spenta, their arms outstretched, desperately pouring their qi into the fire in an attempt to control it. A strong wind swirls around the room, whipping up long scrolls on the wall that are filled with – strangely – Han writing.
I found it interesting that in both cases, Ahura's qi was described as being "oppressive". I'm definitely reaching here, but when Big Wang defeated Ahura he didn't combat Ahura's oppressive, dominating nature with direct aggression of his own. Perhaps something to think about? As for the Eternal Flame, it seems to be a conduit of some sort. I'm having trouble sorting through some of the DISCUSS!!!,
treave, what is the Eternal Flame and what is it's function here, exactly? I understand if this is SPOILERS territory, though, just curious if Jing would know at the moment.
His eyes are yet closed, but as his shape grows more and more distinct, a twisted smile spreads very slowly across his lips. Although he stands in the center of the conflagration, he remains unburned, his skin unblemished and unmarked.
...
Vahista lets out a foreign curse as he redoubles his efforts, stepping closer to the fire. “We must strengthen the Eternal Flame! It will purify our Lord! Tonight is the crucial period... once we pass this stage, his recovery is assured!” The white flame burns more brightly and strongly than before as it flares up in response to Vahista’s qi. The overwhelming power that you have felt begins subsiding slowly; what the Amesha Spenta are doing is beginning to take effect. Then, Ahura’s eyes open: they, too, are pure white, as if the Eternal Flame itself burns within his body. Though you can see no pupils, you get the dreadful feeling that he is looking around the room.
And for just a single moment, your gaze meets his.
The Eternal Flame explodes.
Unblemished. Unmarked. Pure.
If your qi is very pure, the fire will be more responsive to you without needing a technique, but it's very, very choosy and if it detects even a hint of impurity you'll need the technique to control it.
Pure in what sense, treave? "Pure" as in a balance between yin and yang? I'm not sure what exactly is meant here.
The living god is surprised for just a brief moment before bursting into a creature of flame and shadow, roaring as his hands blur in a movement that knocks aside all of your attacks with ease and ends up closing around your throat. A scorching pain radiates throughout your neck. You retaliate by grabbing his throat with both of your hands, though it burns your fingers to do so, and shove him hard. It looks like he has no presence of mind – Ahura only snarls like a mindless beast as your surprise attack pushes him backwards further, just enough to step into the center of the chamber.
Not sure if this is a hint, but the properties of shadow and flame correspond to yin and yang, respectively. So I suppose a being composed solely of the two would be a pure one, containing only yin and yang.
As if on cue, the Eternal Flame erupts around you, roaring back to life and blinding your vision again. For some reason, the white fire does not harm you; instead, its essence seeps into your body. You feel the impurities in your inner strength being burnt away as it reacts with your qi. You grow gradually weaker, and the fire grows steadily hotter, as if feeding off your life force. The heat is starting to become unbearable. Your qi begins to go out of control as it attempts to fight off the Eternal Flame, with your body as the battlefield. A terrible pain shoots throughout your entire body, almost knocking you out: it is a familiar one, one that you felt once before when Master Zhang destroyed your meridians.
I'm not sure; why would this pain be similar to the one we felt when Master Zhang destroyed our meridians?
treave, would Jing know why this is the case?
You grit your teeth, but Ahura screams, and his fingers crush your throat. You choke, gasping for breath as blood begins bubbling out of your mouth, but still you keep your grip on him. In the mad god’s desperation you feel his qi pouring into you, attempting to destroy you from inside out. You try to absorb it, to mitigate the damage that he is doing, but the sheer torrent of qi is almost too much for your body to handle. It is half light and half dark, orderly and chaotic, and suddenly you realize what the Grand Taoist had done.
Is this where our
neigong cap was worn down,
treave? What specific event ended up affecting our toad demon essence?
He had transformed Ahura’s qi from order into chaos, turning light into darkness. The result had wreaked havoc and destruction on a body unprepared, unadapted to handle such a change. Perhaps the Eternal Flame was meant to purify and to regenerate Ahura, but the Amesha Spenta may have known nothing about the qi that he now lived with, and its side-effects. The Flame seems to have succeeded in restoring his internal energy to a certain extent, but the process is yet incomplete, and you appear to have interrupted it at the worst possible moment.
Okay, so he's still got a ton of "impurities" within him. Ahura was comprised of order, Big Wang's deadly qi technique turned that order into chaos, and now the Amesha Spenta have kept Ahura in this chamber to return him into a state of order. I think that's the right of it.
Your sight wavers. This is a fight you cannot win, your strength waning with every second. Ahura has even taken control over the Eternal Flame, as he directs it to destroy you in his pain and anger: your chaos appears to be anathema to the light of the fire, as it seems driven to destroy you at all costs.
I hope I'm getting the fact straight here: with the Amesha Spenta scattered from the Eternal Flame after it blew up, Ahura used his incredible inner strength to take it over himself, and now he's directed it towards us. It's coming at us because our chaotic qi is something that it instinctively wants to destroy.
All flows from the Origin and returns to the Origin.
A. All flows from the Origin and returns to the Origin. Chaos is the source of both yin and yang, and the two combined can dissolve back into chaos. If the Grand Taoist could turn Ahura’s qi into that similar to your own, it might be possible, even with your limited understanding, to transform your own qi, drawing out yin and yang from the primordial chaos. Where Ahura was unable to change the nature of his own qi and was burnt by his own flames, you must succeed. You will attempt, against all odds, to derive order from chaos, wresting control of the Eternal Flame to turn it against the man that once embodied it.
Even in our limited understanding, we knew that yin and yang arose from the Primordial Chaos that has manifested our qi. There's no question that this is possible, the real question is whether we can actually do it. Of course, both options are insane.
B. All flows from the Origin and returns to the Origin. The chaos is infinite in its depth, and boundless in its hunger – in the end, all returns to it, no matter yin or yang. You will not let pain nor a crushed throat stop you; Ahura’s amateur use of his chaotic qi will not match yours. You draw in and absorb everything you can: you will take in the Eternal Flame and Ahura’s qi – all of it – no matter how much it hurts you. You are not sure whether your body will be able to handle the strain of channeling such power, but your willpower will not be shaken by such petty concerns. After all, you are the disciple of Zhang Jue.
Even in the short time that we've been here we've lost five points of our
neigong cap. If we imagine our inner strength as a large reservoir that we fill more and more as we absorb Ahura's tremendous qi, in this short period of time, our juggernaut supertanker has been replaced with by a dump truck. A dump truck can still carry tons of stuff in it, but this seems like a job fit only for a supertanker.
Based on that, and on Ganymede's excellent arguments, I have to go with
A
A Taoist story tells of an old man who accidentally fell into the river rapids leading to a high and dangerous waterfall. Onlookers feared for his life. Miraculously, he came out alive and unharmed downstream at the bottom of the falls. People asked him how he managed to survive.
"I accommodated myself to the water, not the water to me. Without thinking, I allowed myself to be shaped by it. Plunging into the swirl, I came out with the swirl. This is how I survived."
True, true.
