Chapter 860: Chapter 860 Is Purple a Creative Colour?
Once Xiang and Yang were definitively asleep, Kat started to ponder how to watch over everyone. Floating in place was fine sure, but it wasn’t even midnight yet and Kat knew she’d have a bunch of time to kill waiting for everyone else to wake up. Part of her wanted to sleep to pass the time quickly but it this area was terribly unsafe. It just wasn’t practical. Most of the wildlife here wasn’t deadly for their bites or claws, but for the poison. Something that could be much more insidious.
So to pass the time Kat started to make an ice block raft to sit on. By pumping demonic energy into the water Kat could freeze it down to the mud... and then further still freezing even that. With a constant supply of demonic energy Kat was pretty sure the platform could be made quite stable.
Sadly, that plan had to be delayed a bit. The cultivators started to shiver as the ice built up. Kat mentally berated herself for the issue and quickly checked Lily over... however the Memphis seemed to be completely fine. Kat wasn’t sure if that was their connection helping improve her resistance to the chill, or if the species was naturally resist to cold. *Hmm... probably the link. Most demons are fire and heat based so having Memphis immune to cold instead of heat is probably a bad idea.*
With that established Kat broke up her ice platform and flew a little bit away making sure she was upwind. It wasn’t a major concern, but hopefully the wind would keep the cold from flowing on the cultivators. Once that was established it actually wasn’t all that hard to create a nice big ice platform. It actually took a deceptively small about of demonic energy. Kat was starting to realise her flames were VERY cold.
It was just a matter of time. The flames themselves were fairly self-contained. They liked to spread to things but didn’t really change the temperature much outside of that small area. That is, unless Kat was focusing on it. Kat found she could sort of... disperse the flames into much smaller embers without much energy and watch as they quickly froze the water and mud nearby. *Hmm... I wonder if this works so well because it’s just water and nothing living, or if all the things I attacked were massively overkilled. Hmm...*
Kat just shrugged and got to work on her platform. After it was nice and square, something that took a bit of effort actually, breaking off the extra edges and flattening them out, Kat started to work on more complicated things. She found out that if she set her demonic fire into a shape and then dribbled water over it, the water would freeze in place. Now, the first chair she made this way practically disintegrated the moment Kat touched it, but this was a learning process.
What Kat didn’t really account for was the fact that the ice didn’t weight all that much while it was loosely distributed over her fire. It built up fairly quickly and was actually a lot closer to light snow then proper ice. When Kat sat down it just shifted to accommodate her ass instead of keeping its shape and holding her up. The only thing the demonic fire really changed was that it did help keep the snow ‘in place’ so to speak.
.....
It didn’t like to flow outside of the demonic fire once it was frozen there. It would still obey gravity and fall to the bottom if it could, but it was a lot like the demonic fire provided a thin support structure to help the snow stay in place. It was a lot like pouring snow into a glass and then expecting it to stay stable when you throw a rock at the side.
In the end though, the moon was still high in the sky and Kat didn’t exactly have anything better to do. Kat restarted her chair making efforts, this time going layer by layer and making sure to compact everything down before moving up. It took her nearly two hours of slowly scooping water. Part of the way through she did switch from hands to a ‘glass’ made out of ice she’d made. The hardest part was actually trying to keep it together while also not just freezing the content. It was more of a bowl in the end, and the edges did start freezing over, but with some delicate demonic energy control and a lot of patience it worked.
Kat slumped down into her chair and relaxed. It wasn’t really all that comfortable. It had next to no give because of how compact it had been made and what little bits weren’t compact were a lot like little grains of sand. It wasn’t the worse place Kat had ever taken a break though. So it was declared ‘good enough’ in her mind.
Kat cast another glance out at the surroundings. There wasn’t really much wildlife from what she could see. Of course, that meant nothing when it was clear most of the inhabitants preferred to stay under the water. Xiang and Yang looked fine. They were a bit far away, but not too far certainly.
Kat did notice the weapons though and sighed. She got up from her chair and took them both back to her raft. Sure it was made of frozen swamp water, but the frozen part was important. The weapons didn’t need to be buried to stay in place and weren’t corroding or something. *Not sure if these have special metals or not... but probably best to take care of them.* anyway. Kat carefully froze off what muck stubbornly clung to the weapons until she was satisfied with the changes. There was still some dirt in the leather pommel of the sword, but there wasn’t much Kat could do about that.
When the sun eventually peaked over the horizon, Kat saw Yang jerk in place. Quickly getting up off her chair, Kat rushed over to see Yang wasn’t entirely well. Yang let out a long hacking cough before wheezing a few more times and trying to bring her legs in to sit cross-legged only to fall over. Kat was close enough to stop that by resting her tail against Yang’s side and holding her up.
Yang’s eyes snapped to Kat and they flashed gold for a moment before Yang breathed in a shuddering breath and holding her chest tightly. “Yang are you alright?” asked Kat softly. Yang growled for about half a second before hissing again and looking away from Kat. Taking a second look, Kat could see that Yang was a lot paler then normal and her hands seemed to be shaking.
“Fine,” snapped Yang before drawing in another hissing breath, calming her down. “Hmmm. I may not be quite so fine. I’ll need to meditate... but I do not wish to do so in this muck...”
“Um... I sort of made a raft because I was bored? Would that work?” offered Kat as she motioned over to the ice raft in question.
Yang met Kat’s eyes and for a moment Kat thought she was about to be kissed. She was looked at with nearly the same intensity Lily liked to use sometimes. It was only there for a moment though, as Yang stood up, with some help though she’d deny it. Yang stumbled her way through the mud and onto Kat’s ice raft. Wincing slightly at the chill but clearly deciding it was worth it. She finished the climb and sat breathing in deeply and trying to absorb the sunlight as best she could.
Kat watched as Yang breathed in slowly and carefully for a few minutes. She didn’t look great, but it was getting better. Though there was nothing to be done about the clothes. They were completely trashed and would likely need to be replaced. That didn’t seem to be bothering Yang at the moment though. Her hair seemed to glow, and her face regained a good deal of its colour.
Then, just as she seemed to be finishing up, Yang sprinted for the edge and retched. A dark black tar like substance spewed forth from her mouth. Kat screwed her face up at the noises and tried to block them out somewhat. “Um... Yang are you ok?” asked Kat softly as she floated over.
Yang shook her head. “No. I didn’t manage to get all of it out either... we weren’t prepared for this... and that might be my fault. While as cultivators we can cleanse this somewhat... there’s just so much poison everywhere. I don’t know if you notice but I’m almost certain it’s in the air as well as the water and just... everything here. I get why forced us to sleep... but we can’t stay here long,”
That was some scary news. Almost as scary as Yang being completely reasonable. Both of those things did not bode well at all. Nor did the fact that with a glance, Kat could see that Xiang wasn’t awake yet. *Oh dear. Hopefully we can leave this cursed place before it causes issues. I really hope Lily doesn’t suffer for this...*
This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺