You enjoy flying in the sky, with your great wings flapping in the wind. Bullets from enemies once pierced through your wings, but they quickly recovered with THEIR mark. The winged messenger seeks shelter in enormous trees, sending the mortal weak ones to the cloud kingdom and bringing miracles of Abundance to the suffering human world.
When you swoop down from the “branches,” you are surrounded by a furor of air exploding, filled with the Residents of Dirt's screams. Those humble creatures should bow to you instead of putting up foolish resistance. You seize your prey and drag him into the clouds, relishing in the thrill as he wiggles in fear. He should thank you for enslaving him. The screams wane over the distance until he is reduced to paste.
You are the Cloudlords that dictate the fate of mortal beings on the ground.
Your thick armor blocks attacks and crushes starskiffs. Your four limbs roam around the battlefield as though you have inexhaustible energy. No mortal being is your match. Death nourishes the grass and the blood gathers into streams. The world is a vast wilderness, ready to be trampled and traversed by you.
You wield a living weapon, a spear crafted by the borisin. Its tentacles can pierce through the chest of enemies and devour their bodies. Whenever you charge through the battlefield and fire, cries of agony come from your enemies' throats as well as the tip of their spear like the howling wind on wintry nights.
Primal instincts and pleasures surge in your body, and you yearn to reclaim the freedom to hunt and kill in this age of iron and fire. You will march relentlessly forward until the day destruction, too, claims you.
Another newborn breaks free from its cocoon. You can feel an itch and a gnawing pain under your skin. It nibbles away the subcutaneous tissue that gets in its way. The mixture of its gel-like secretions and the pus from the wounds solidifies on the inner walls of the nest, becoming the breeding ground of an immortal corpus.
It wriggles slowly to shift its body to another direction. Just like countless of its peers, it pierces through the final layer of skin and worms its way out of its host. When you stroke it, feeling pleased for its birth, the milky-white larva lifts its head, bites your fingertip instinctively, and swallows the flesh and blood you feed it.
What a familial feeling of pain! The soul snatch bees that fill your body numb your nerves with their venom, and their collective biting resembles an elegant concerto. You let out a maniacal laugh to celebrate your wonderful immortality.
Immortality is the undying curse, as well as eternity's blessing. All living beings suffer, but there is no one to help them. You sought an elixir from the divine traces of Yaoshi, listened to THEIR compassionate teachings, and embarked on the never-ending journey of rescuing the suffering.
The regent of Kumjade melted the steel on the entire planet to forge 30 million pairs of eyes and ears to monitor every movement of the citizens. Rising from the wailing of the children, you march to the royal capital and behead the regent. The evil demon of Purlang weaved through the nebulas, devouring ships with its treacherous tentacles. You ride a slender boat into is abdomen and carve out its heart.
Willows wrap around your chest and reach your waist. The mortal wounds heal, signaling your journey is far from reaching its end. The immortals have their own responsibilities. You pick up the sword that could slice through steel and iron, listening to the please for help from the stars.
Multiply, multiply, and multiply… You wriggle toward the heat source ahead. It is struggling with all its might. The blue flame penetrates your body, dragging you along through space. You gnaw away its outer shell, allowing your viscous body to seep in through the opening cracks. Your massive body bursts the food to the point of rupture from within. You start aiming for smaller targets, clambering onto their protrusions until you envelop their whole bodies, then pulling them in for digestion.
Something is tingling in your skin. You grow eyes on that spot, locking them in place, and mimicking their body structures in response to the heat source's assault. You extend one-third of your body and capture them, linking them together with metal. The abundance of nutrients causes your cells to quiver and divide, producing more offspring.
The mechabeast's sharp fangs tear through the battlefield, its insatiable bloodlust and malevolence unmistakable, as it masticates the prey's bridge and devours the opponent's retaliation, shoving it down its throat. Roots made for ingestion peel away the weak skin, tracing its onslaught, as you valiantly leap into the heart of the enemy's ship. The blood thrumming in your veins drives you, and even the armor on your back seems to echo with vigor.
Sharp fangs slice through throats, claws maul through armor, and the feeble primate trembles under the destruction of the Lupitoxin. You extinguish his life as easily as crushing an ant, and this bores you a little. Ignoring the relentless itch that is penetrating your skin, you hold a weapon that only a slave will use, inching closer to your scattered prey, your body swelling.
The cycle of nature sees the weak surrender all to the wolves. Sipping on the blood of sheep, gnawing on bones and flesh, and draping on howling furs, the blades of war shall paint the lands in crimson red.
When the three hundred and thirty-three nations in the planetary system dwindle to mere names, the destiny of annihilation has already visited, following the path laid out by the curses of the dead. The cessation of war fails to heal the wounds that have no bottom line. All residents had their DNA shredded and shattered, and even the president cowering in his bunker has not been spared.
You pull with all the knowledge you've amassed in your lifetime, but the deformities and organ failure grip the other end of the rope tightly, dragging people into the afterworld. Until one day, a foreign envoy with branches sprouting out of his back arrives with a divine elixir. He halts the spread of the festering disease, preaching to us that only with THEIR divine power can salvation for the residents be achieved. The merciful Sanctus Medicus spreads THEIR healing wings, lifting the heavy burden of suffering from humanity's shoulders, and quenches all worldly desires with THEIR immortality elixir.
The fleet from the Seaview Nebula sets sail, seeking the elixir from the hands of Yaoshi, aiming to quell the audacity of perpetual death and epidemic.
The leaves climb upward, eclipsing the sky and bathing in the light of the stars. As the branches are weighed down by gravity, a beam of sunlight descends through the gap onto the new sprouts below, allowing them to stretch out their bodies. As the excess nutrients are passed through the filtering vines to the entangled roots below, you accept their mood in relief. They want to grow even taller, all the way up close to the sun.
The new shoots take root within your body to absorb even more vitality. As your branches wither and yellow and your leaves decompose, they provide the new life with fresh nutrients. How much taller does it have to grow? Your trunk is filled with intricate root systems. Within your corpse, they will rise even higher and climb tot he star before them. Then, these roots will ensnare that ball of flame and swallow it.
As you jump from the ionosphere of Planet Freya, the insane atmosphere ablates your flesh, peels off your skin, and ignites your bones before they re-grow, only to be reduced to a pulp on contact with the ground as you hit the land. As you lie on the ground of the abandoned city, the bullets of the local hoodlums offer you a warm welcome. As they unleash their ammo, their wanton laughter slowly grows silent as it turns into fear.
What could possibly be better than an immortal body? You could jump into the forest of Planet Reidmann, be devoured by a killer bird, and carve apart its body from inside its stomach. You wish to enjoy Tortani's bath once more, as the remnant radiation from its annihilation causes your skin to ulcerate and your blood to flow from all orifices. In your suffering and agony, you are filled with the tangible feeling of being alive.
You die over and over again, just for greater and greater stimulation.
It is often said that only through living can we truly experience joy. Cheeks are the fertile soil for smiles, toes are the tickles of the waves, and arms are the warmth of an embrace. A smile is both the cost of healing and the reward of life itself.
You coil the branches, crafting a heart from the joy of unrestrained drinking, one that eternally slurps at fresh blood. You seek out skin and flesh, nurturing the palm that will surely applaud when the final curtain falls. The prosthetics of the incapacitated always dance to the rhythm of the music, while the throats of the voiceless twist into sneers at the presumptuous words of politicians. In the places where you have healed, laughter erupts uncontrollably — arms, hearts, skin, and even cells reveling in laughter. In the end, even the faces of the terrified cannot help but break into smiles.
You have journeyed across a thousand stars to bring equal joy to life.
Toxins accumulate in the heart, while abominations parasitize the arms, leaving you to witness countless incurable ailments where patients writhe in agony, unable to find solace even in sleep. Some afflictions are embedded in their very genes, and removing them would compromise the integrity of the immune system. Others become entwined with the patient's survival. Once they're cured, the host can never live.
You incinerate the root cause of disease along with its carriers, prescribing a potent remedy know as “No Pain, No Gain.” In an instant, the heat sublimates the sickly and unsalvageable heart, while the beam of energy obliterates the arm wrapped in twisted branches and leaves. Destruction stands as the natural enemy of all illnesses. Once burned in the flames, even the most grotesque viruses have nowhere to hide. You stare as the flames forge new a vessel for the patient — a pure antimatter body, born anew.
It is said that Abundance is the kindest panacea — it heals both the sick and sorrowful. Yet, those unworthy of a cure gain immortality, while those who deserve to live die without even a burial place. The Herb Plucker does not pluck herbs. Humans are what they pluck.
The sick and penniless see you as a god and sculpt statues in your honor. The powerful and wealthy see you as a drug and imprison you in a cage. They drain your body, distilling it into poison in test tubes. As they lay on their deathbed, they fire bullets into your chest. Yet, the only one who does not age or die is the Herb Plucker.
THEIR benedictions never seem to wane. You travel from planet to planet, restoring the overflowing life force to all beings. Yet, greed always eclipses goodness, and calamity always comes before healing. If this has always been the way of the world, O Yaoshi, what truly defines panacea, and what defines a good physician?