[centre][img]https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/divinus-iii/images/d/df/Shengshi-logo.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/310?cb=20190112093445[/img][/centre]

[centre][h1]Shengshi[/h1][/centre]

[centre]1FP/0MP[/centre]

There had been no dream - Shengshi’s mind had been too broken to even reach the Palace. The snake’s crusted eyes cracked open, revealing a pair of bloodshot, stone grey orbs each adorned with one empty reptilian iris. Some time passed before the snake actually perceived the light passing through these irises - it was vast and blue, lit by one distant orb of yellow fire and complemented by a smaller, blueish orb that appeared almost crystalline, both sticking awkwardly to the blue surface like flies in a web. He let out a long, dry groan.

The snake god felt his head pump and rush like a heart as his mind desperately ordered the rest of his body to react. A moment passed and the snake felt his sensations return, though he promptly wished they had not. Unlike his eyes, the snake’s tongue had been spending one too many hours in open air and had thusly pruned up quite spectacularly; he raised an agonising hand to his nose and found that it still remained, which was odd seeing as the snake could neither feel it nor breathe through it; finally, the snake god found that his abdomen had been left underneath all the barrels from the night before and that his tail was now severely lacking in all manner of bodily fluids. He lifted his back, sounding the crackling cacophony of a crooked cord straightening out, and let out a pained yelp.  He lifted a stiff arm to his face and dragged a sticky palm across his groggy features. Upon pulling his hand away, he noticed visible traces of all the colours of the alcoholic rainbow on his skin - from grape red to vomit green. 

“Xi… Xiaolih…” he rumbled. 

There was a long, empty pause.

“Xiaoli!” he repeated, his voice sparking a hint of frustration. He curled himself forward enough to achieve something one could generously refer to as stability and placed his head in a dry palm. He cursed mentally. Where was that damn girl? Had she and the mortal fallen asleep together inside the palace, perhaps? He had to investigate.

With reluctance and resistance, the snake’s body manage to raise the creature to a standing position. He shook his face until his cheeks wobbled and blew his nostrils clean. He poked the crusts out of his eyes and slowly slithered towards the palace in a zig-zagging manner. By the Architect, he would give her such a scolding. How could she have left her master to sleep on the deck, like some drunken scum? He had evidently been too kind with her. He took a quick detour to the railing to purge his guts of the remains of yesternight’s feast. However, upon looking back up, the snake’s eyes widened.

The ship was no longer surrounded by vague excuses for grass, but the horizon was green and rich with illuminated foliage, and the skies were black with birds. How long had he slept?!

“Xiaoli! Where are you?!” he roared once more, charging up to his chambers, all pain and discomfort forgotten in the moment. The stairs became a blur underneath the racing god; the doors, mere paper before the rampaging beast. His beautiful gates were violently ripped from their hinges as Shengshi quite literally burst into the room, scanning his uncharacteristically clean chambres with desperate eyes. They were empty. 

The stairs once more became a blur as he stormed under deck and inspected the every room he could think of down there; afterwards, he searched every guest room.

Not a single soul to be found.

After nearly a day of turning his entire ship on its head, Shengshi hopped off and into the river, swimming its entire length several hundred times over the course of the rest of the day. He flanked the river on each side on foot the following day.

“To think one so close to me would simply evaporate like so…” he said and shot Heliopolis a scowl. Maybe she actually had…

He promptly shook his head. A silly hypothesis. It was not nearly hot enough. 

“Then perhaps… [i]An assassin[/i]!” he proclaimed and grabbed at his chest. Such tragedy, such horror! To think his dearest Xiaoli had so suddenly been sent to that funny cat. Oh, what a horrid fate!

He shook his head again. “No, that cannot be it. I am certain I would have felt something.” He begun to ascend the closest mountain. Alright, so… She was not dead - that was certain. Then had she perhaps been kidnapped?!

The snake let out a vicious snarl and raised his fist into the air. [i]The nerve![/i] He had invited a guest into his home and she had kidnapped his most prized servant! He slithered atop the peak and raised both hands into the air, clenching his fists.

“Curse you, mortal! A thousand, ten thousand bitter curses from the bleakest void be cast upon your petty soul!” He keeled forward and let out a few heavy pants. A faint and rare, yet oddly familiar sensation tickled at his eyes and the god reached a clawed finger to his face. He retracted it and inspected the glistening orb dangling from his clawtip - a tear, clear and pure as thin, fresh ice, yet murky with sorrow and solitude. His eyes rapidly spawned more and the snake collapsed onto his tail, casting his blurry gaze at the many droplets crashing against his palms and the cold stone below. He wrapped his arms around himself and let out a quiet wail that promptly morphed into hacking hulks.

“I-...” He snorted. “This… Is my fault…” He let out another wail. “I am… I am scum!” 

A sudden clash of scale against flesh echoed through the immediate air. Shengshi snorted again and rubbed his sore cheek. Then he struck himself again.

“You -fool-! You utter, impudent lizard!” he snarled at himself and slapped his jaw once more. “You tell her you will change your ways… You tell her the future will be different… And what do you do?!” His hand lost momentum and fell down against the dirt. The snake collapsed onto his elbows and hammered against the stone with clenched fists, sending gentle ripples through the mountain.

“You reveal to her nothing but the hypocrite within.” 

There was a long pause, broken only by the occasional sulk. Shengshi turned his murky eyes to his fists once more and examined the cracks they had struck into the immediate stone around him. He snickered coldly to himself.

“I see… Even as I rage against my own folly, I simultaneously destroy that which is around me.” He stroked gently at the stone cracks. “My hubris, my arrogance, my impulses…” He hummed pensively. “They are all part of me, yet undesirable parts - scum to be scraped off…” 

He curled up his tail and sat himself comfortably on top of it. “-... Or is it the cream that should be skimmed off? Parts so integral to my being that they should be savoured - desired even!” He looked down into the river valley below, his home glistening on the stream like a nugget of gold in a beck.

“I mean, gaze upon what I have created! I should naturally be allowed a smidge of pride!”

He snickered. “Yet I confess - I may possibly, once or twice, under certain circumstances, be a little vexing, perhaps.” He scratched his chin. “Yet are those traits truly undesirable - is a prideless god a worthy one? Is the meek creator one to be respected? Are the impulses  to be repelled?”

He shook his head. “It is clear that none of these hold true - a god who cannot take pride in its work will forever be hated by its inadequate creations; no sane creature would ever respect a creator with no spine; and an existence without impulse is empty.” He rose up and looked into the sky.

“And yet… And. Yet, the inadequacy holds true for the opposite.” He took a deep breath and sighed. “The Flow carries no inherent message of balance…” He closed his eyes. “However, the rivers adapt to the world around. I used to despise the idea of conflict, yet I have caused it on several occasions - all because I failed to adapt.” 

Shengshi looked around at the stone surface below. It flattened out in his immediate area, but the peak upon which he stood was flanked by plateaus and points on all sides, with rolling hills and crevices flowing outwards from the mountain’s foot below. Far below, the bioluminescent woodlands and its inhabitants flourished all around the island. He felt his heart pulse warmly at the sight. His project’s subjects - the creations to which he would bring prosperous harmony in time.

“For that, however, I must adapt.” He waved his hands and a brush blackened with ink popped into his right hand; in his left hand appeared a stack of rice paper sheets. The snake hummed for a moment and begun to write.

[centre][i]In knowing the Flow, a sound mind is key;
With wisdom in tow, the way splits in three:
The saintly is humble,
With manners upheld;
The chosen will bargain,
So enmity’s quelled;
The wise act as such, respectful of all,
Like undisturbed rivers, the Flow is unstalled.[/i][/centre]

He dipped his brush in a floating orb of ink he had summoned and reached for a second page.

[centre][i]In knowing the Flow, a soul must know change:
The morphing of forms, of content and range.
The river will slither
Past hard rock and stone;
The landscape; reborn
With threads, water-sown.
The tapestry shifts and twists and turns;
In studying Flow, it is this one must learn.[/i][/centre]

Another dip of ink and change of paper coloured the otherwise dull soundscape.

[centre][i]In knowing the Flow, the soul must have heart.
A saint of the Flow, with emotions can’t part.
The river turns right,
A mind of outrage;
The river turns left,
The mind of a sage.
The river is fickle, thus even the wise
Carries a sword, should conflict arise.[/i][/centre]

Shengshi punctuated the final page with his personal stamp and put it on top of the two others. He read through his work again and hummed ponderously. Yes… This would be his work - his gift to the mortals upon their arrival. His Classic of Wisdom - his philosophy and the concept of the Flow condensed onto paper for all to read and evaluate. However, this was merely a first draft of a manuscript - there was much work to be done.

The snake took the pages and rolled them together before securing them with a few strands of his black hair. With scroll in hand, he descended the mountain. However, he stopped halfway down and scanned the forested lands below, its dim illumination barely visible in the light of Heliopolis. He rubbed his chin and gazed back up at the admittedly barren mountains. These would need some colours, too, though the bright kind that melts and forms those nice little tributaries.

He snapped his fingers and grinned. These mountains would be the source of this island’s fresh water. All would drink deeply in the cleanest water from the peaks, and the rivers would be both populated by and flanked with all manners of creatures that could live in both cold mountains and warmer waters. Yes, he had laid his plan - now to execute it.

Shengshi raised his arms. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, with a rumble, several tons of water from the lakes and rivers below rushed up to their master in the form of colossal pillars. The snake waited until the pillars had grown girthy and rich, then clapped his hands together, sending the pillars at a colliding trajectory right above the mountain’s peak. The waters crashed against one another, sounding a frightening-... Poof?

What fell from the heavens was not water at all - no destructive flood or deadly wave - but snow. Tons of snow fell across all the mountains on the island, colouring them a beautiful white. Once the snake was satisfied with the amount of snow, he twisted his hands. The white dunes around him began to shake and quiver. Then, they erupted to reveal all manners of hairy, furry creatures of varying sizes. A few of them trundled over to the slowly forming streams towards the lower edges of the snow blanket and made futile attempts to jump in; others hopped and skipped around in the white heaps, ecstatic to be alive. They slowly began to spread out across the mountain range, their wide paws and thick-skinned webbed feet keeping them from falling through the feeble ice layer on top of the snow.

The snake grinned. Asceal would love this! Lots of bright surfaces to reflect even the dimmest of light. A strange, woolly creature came over to the snake and rubbed its horned head against its creator affectionately. The snake raised his eyebrow at the creature and patted it carefully. It bleated happily before pulling away and hopping off. Shengshi noticed that it was particularly woolly around its wide hooves, no doubt to keep itself warm as it swam through his rivers. Another one of the snake’s creations, a small furry frog, ribbited quietly as it hopped into the snow and swam through it as if it was water. 

“Ah… Adaptability,” the snake said contently. Now that the rivers were beginning to form, he hopped into one and swam his way down the mountain. He would have to keep looking for Xiaoli, but at least now he had calmed himself.

Somewhat.

[hider=Sad Snake Writes a Book and Plays in the Snow]
Shengshi wakes up with the hangover to end all hangovers and has no idea where Xiaoli is. As he sobers up, he gets more and more desperate to find her until he eventually mounts a mountain to sulk.

On the mountain, he has a philosophical debates with himself and proceeds to start his big writing project: The Classic of Wisdom. 
Once satisfied, he turns the mountains of Istais into snowpeaks full of all manners of creatures and sources of fresh water. Proceeds to look for Xiaoli again thereafter.
[/hider]

[hider=Might Use]
Shengshi at the start of the turn:
5FP/0MP

Proceeds to create Large Ecosystem for 4FPs.

Has 1FP left.
[/hider]