Dawn broke over the Grand Desolate Forest with a wash of pale golden light, filtering through the emerald leaves of the Primordial Spirit Willow. Dewdrops clung to the roof edges of the newly erected cedar pavilion, dripping onto the river stones below with a rhythmic, crystal chime.
Yet along the fresh porch, the morning air was thick with the quiet groans of physical tiredness.
Su Ling’er sat on a rough cedar block, her slender shoulders hunched over a stack of newly planed bamboo slats. Her amethyst eyes were bloodshot from a night spent calculating timber stress ratios, stone foundation cubic measurements, and winter food reserves. Every few minutes, she reached up to massage the base of her neck. That let out a soft, tired breath as her three white tails drooped weakly against the cedar decking.
Ten paces away, Tie Shan was slowly stretching his massive frame, his thick joints popping like dry bamboo knuckles.
The nine-foot titan bear rubbed the small of his lower back with his gray-furred right paw, his leathery face twisted in a grimace. Carrying thirty two-ton granite giant pillars across a rocky mountain defile in a single evening was a feat that only an awakened Beast Sovereign could accomplish. But even titan bone had its limits. His massive lower-back spine was tightly knotted, stiffened from hundreds of years of swinging a five-hundred-jin forging hammer on cold stone.
“Aiyee...” Tie Shan grunted, trying to touch his toes and failing by two feet. “My old back feels like a dried pine board left in a snowdrift. Those granite piers were solid as iron, but they’ve turned my spine into a hardened riverbed.”
Even Xiao Hei, lying by the pavilion steps in his tightly packed retriever form, gave a weary canine yawn, resting his heavy chin upon his front paws. Running thirty miles of ridge patrols while scouting cedar groves had left his wind-spirit veins drained.
Lin Xiao, resting in the center of the sunlit cedar deck, observed his exhausted companions with deep, sympathetic amusement.
In his last mortal life as a warehouse logistics dispatcher, Lin Xiao knew the agony of chronic lower-back fatigue all too well. He remembered the twelve-hour shifts spent lifting freight crates, the painful stiffness of sitting in terrible plastic office chairs, and the divine, heavenly salvation of returning home to sink into a giant, high-thickness stretchy memory foam beanbag chair.
Hard work is honorable, Lin Xiao mused. His sapphire fluid waved gently in the morning warmth. But working yourself into a crippled pretzel is just bad logistics. In the training world, everyone acts like sitting on freezing stone slabs for a hundred years makes you enlightened. In reality, it just gives you arthritis and a miserable personality.
A bright idea rippled through his fluid matrix.
“Omniscient Dao Spirit,” Lin Xiao queried silently. “What’s our current volume and impact-hardening adjustability?”
“Report,” the Dao Spirit chimed in her cool, deadpan rhythm. “Host possesses variable non-Newtonian dilatant thickness. Fluid outer edge can expand by five hundred percent while maintaining nonstop high-pressure balance. Internal heat core can emit steady surface heat levels between minus twenty and one hundred and eighty degrees.”
“Perfect,” Lin Xiao smiled. “Let’s invent the world’s first self-heating orthopedic beanbag chair.”
Lin Xiao focused his internal core, drawing upon his Foundation-stage liquid pool. He didn’t condense into iron-hard metal armor. Instead, he relaxed his atom-deep bonds. It stretched his azure semi-clear body from a forty-inch melon into a generous, rounded, four-foot-wide hemispherical cushion.
He set his internal heat core to a gentle, comforting bath-warmth. The exact soothing balance needed to induce deep myofascial release and relax squeezed tight blood vessels. Within his fluid matrix, gentle rising heat currents began to circulate. That created a micro-pulsing rhythm that felt like the soothing hum of a warm summer tide.
“Ling’er,” Lin Xiao called out warmly, his clear voice breaking the quiet morning stillness.
Su Ling’er looked up from her bamboo tablets, her fox ears twitching. “Yes, Lord Xiao? Do you need fresh spring water or roasted tea leaves?”
“I need you to put down that brush and sit down before you faint from tiredness,” Lin Xiao replied, patting his swelled azure surface with a soft slime arm. “Come here. Sit on the deck and lean your back against me.”
Su Ling’er’s jaw dropped. Her amethyst eyes widened in sheer, mortified panic.
“L-Lord Xiao!” she stammered, clutching her bamboo slips to her chest as her cheeks flushed bright crimson beneath her fur. “How could I possibly... You’re the Primordial Chaos Sovereign! The living master of the Great Desolate Forest! To use your divine, sky body as a... A seat? That would be a blasphemy worthy of heavenly lightning!”
Lin Xiao let out a wet, bubbling chuckle that sounded like a happy brook.
“Ling’er, look at me,” Lin Xiao said with boundless good humor. “I’m a round, squishy blue blob who likes sweet roasted yams and fresh river breezes. There’s zero blasphemy in taking care of family. You spent the entire night designing our home. The least I can do is make sure your spine doesn’t snap in half. Sit down before I have Xiao Hei drag you over.”
Xiao Hei let out a supportive woof from the porch steps, wagging his tail.
Slowly, trembling with a mixture of terror and overwhelming curiosity, Su Ling’er stood up. She walked over to the sunlit section of the deck, smoothing her vermilion robes, and cautiously lowered herself to the cedar floorboards directly in front of Lin Xiao’s swelled form.
Taking a deep, nervous breath, she allowed her aching shoulders and back to lean backward into the blue jelly.
The moment her spine made contact with Lin Xiao’s surface, Su Ling’er froze.
Her eyes dilated. Her breath caught in her throat.
There was no sudden coldness, no slimy residue, no unstable sinking into a bottomless puddle. Instead, Lin Xiao’s stretchy non-Newtonian matrix instantly conformed to the exact body contours of her body. The fluid yielded gently to her curves, cradling her lower-back curve with zero pressure points, before thickening into firm, tough support that held her upright without any muscular effort on her part.
At the same time, the thirty-eight-point-five-degree warmth began to seep through her silk robes.
It wasn’t the harsh heat of a flame, but the deep, piercing life-force of ancient chaos dew. The warmth flowed directly into her squeezed tight back muscles. It melted away the piled up knots of tension like morning frost beneath the sun. Her three snow-white tails, which had been stiff with stress, sank into the plush azure contours, their fur fluffing out in sheer, pure comfort.
“Ah...”
A soft, melting sigh escaped Su Ling’er’s lips. A sound of such deep, uninhibited relief that her hands went fully limp. It dropped the bamboo brush onto her lap. Her fox ears drooped lazily to the sides. A deep, rhythmic purr began to rumble in her chest.
“By the ancestors...” she whispered, her voice slurred with divine languor. “My shoulders... The cold ache in my spine... It’s gone. It feels as though I’m floating inside a sun-warmed cloud.”
Tie Shan, who had been watching from five paces away, stared at Su Ling’er with his mouth agape.
The proud, regal Starry Fox Maiden was now leaning back against the blue slime like a satisfied kitten, her eyelids fluttering in blissful semi-mind. She only hours ago had carried herself with the untouchable poise of a royal princess.
Tie Shan swallowed hard, clutching his stiff lower back. “Lord Xiao... Is that... Is that truly so comfortable?”
“Uncle Tie,” Lin Xiao called out with a cheerful wobble. “There’s plenty of room on my western flank. Come plant that nine-hundred-jin titan frame right here.”
The titan bear paused, looking down at his huge thighs and massive iron-gray bulk.
“Lord Xiao, I’m an Earth-Bear Beast Sovereign,” Tie Shan rumbled nervously. He waved his golden titan hand. “My skeletal thickness alone weighs more than an ox cart! If I lean on you with my full weight, I’ll squish you into a blue puddle that washes between the floorboards!”
“Uncle Tie, you’re talking to someone who ate a twenty-foot barbed cold-iron chain for an afternoon snack,” Lin Xiao replied with a confident ripple. “Trust me. You couldn’t pop me if you dropped a cliff on top of me. Sit down!”
Tie Shan scratched his braided beard, grunted, and cautiously sat down on the cedar planks beside Su Ling’er. Bracing himself for disaster, the huge titan slowly leaned his massive back against Lin Xiao’s flank.
WHUMP.
Nine hundred pounds of dense, muscle-packed titan bear slammed into Lin Xiao’s side.
At the exact split second of impact, Lin Xiao’s non-Newtonian impact-hardening fluid locked in cleanly without a hitch. The fluid specks instantly interlocked into dense, shock-absorbing high-pressure springs. Lin Xiao didn’t deform by more than two inches. Instead, he absorbed the huge moving mass. It spread the load across his entire basal outer edge with flawless water-pressure balance.
Then, Lin Xiao relaxed just enough to let his surface mold around Tie Shan’s massive shoulder blades.
KRA-KRAK-POP!
A series of deep, ringing pops echoed along Tie Shan’s spine as the packed crushing pressure gently coaxed three misaligned lower-back bones back into their proper slots.
Tie Shan’s eyes went fully white.
The nine-foot titan bear let out a deep-throated, earth-shaking groan of pure, pure ecstasy that rattled the cedar beams above:
“OOOOOOHHHH... BY THE HEAVENS AND THE SEVEN UNDERWORLDS!”
Tie Shan slumped backward with his full weight, abandoning all mortal pride. The soothing chaos warmth pierced his three-inch-thick hide, soaking into his ancient, soot-damaged marrow. For forty years, the old blacksmith had lived with a dull, throbbing ache behind his ribs from slaving over hot anvils in drafty caverns. In thirty seconds, that ancient agony was washed away into non-existence.
“Lord Xiao...” Tie Shan cried openly, resting the back of his grizzled head against the blue dome. “This... This isn’t a cushion. This is the sacred embrace of the Mother Earth herself! My hips are singing! My ribs are floating!”
Xiao Hei, seeing his companions in such sublime peace, couldn’t resist any longer. The black hound trotted over, gave Lin Xiao’s front a gentle lick with his warm tongue. Then he curled his body snugly around Lin Xiao’s base, resting his snout right between Su Ling’er’s boots and Tie Shan’s massive paws.
Down in the Clear Stream pool, Xiao Long swam to the edge of the low porch, resting his pearl-white chin on the cedar planking, purring softly as the morning sun warmed the water.
A crisp bronze chime echoed in Lin Xiao’s mental sea. He was followed by the amused confirmation of the Omniscient Dao Spirit:
Lin Xiao extended a slender azure tendril. He reached into a small cedar bowl resting on the deck to pluck a roasted mountain chestnut. Drawing the sweet, nutty snack into his core, he savored the caramelized flavor while basking in the warm morning sun.
Across the continent, Lin Xiao thought with a contented fluid hum, immortal elders are sitting on freezing peaks, coughing blood and enduring frostbite to understand the Dao of Non-Attachment. And here we’re, sitting on a sunlit porch, leaning on each other like a pile of lazy seals.
If this is what being a Primordial Chaos Sovereign means, I think I chose the right career.
Beside him, Su Ling’er had already fallen into a peaceful, dreamless sleep against his side, her three white tails wrapped warmly around her knees. Tie Shan began to snore with the steady, rumbling rhythm of distant thunder, his golden titan arm resting limp upon his lap.
Lin Xiao closed his white crescent eyes. That let the gentle murmur of the river and the singing cedar roof edges wash over his soul, reveling in the purest luxury known to mortal or immortal alike. An undisturbed, perfectly comfortable morning nap.