[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][h3]MP: 2/FP: 6[/h3][/centre]

The snake sat in his restored chambres with his face in his hands. While his furniture and possessions all had come back at the snap of his fingers, a scar stretched out across his pride like a crack in barren soil. While he had routed the dragons eventually, the battle of the Giant’s Bath had been anything but a victory. To think that a god such as himself, one who had fought against the maddened Vakk and triumphed alongside his allies, struggled against that many-headed newt. His hand fell on the three-striped scar on his belly - the first wound on his person to ever draw forth his divine blood. It excreted a disgusting aura about it, not visible to the eye or smellable by the nose, but observed through the much more sophisticated mind.

He, Shengshi, could be wounded.

While Vakk’s death proved that gods were not entirely immortal, it still irked him that even mortal creatures could strike at sacred skin and inflict a form of damage. Naturally, he thought, he would never have died from the wound, regardless of the fact that it looked rather more dire than it actually was. Still, a cut was a cut, and any such scar could potentially be seen as a weakness. Besides, it looked ugly.

Shengshi shook his head and rubbed his eyes with two fingers. He needed to get all this dragon madness off his mind, lest he would go insane. He rose up and slithered out on his veranda, taking in the sights of the jungles to the south, interrupted by the faint shadow of Xishan in the far edges of the horizon. Below his palace tower, down on the deck of the ship, the cries and coos of servant children formed an unfamiliar cacophony. He let his eyes fall upon the odd sight: a small battalion of miniature servants, none of whom could walk, but were regardless brought onto deck by their parents for collective lessons on just that. The snake smirked as nearly five hundred children dressed in tiny, unicoloured silk robes were picked up by the arms and placed on their feet, only to fall down flat on their bellies and let out a high-pitched cry, much to the dismay of the parents. Shengshi found his mood heightened a little bit and let out a quiet snicker. He looked to the west, along the length of Beihe towards bubbling sea, constantly enshrouded in mists. Shengshi shook his head in disapproval and gazed back at his precious river. Despite Beihe being his first creation, the waters were still quite barren - the only life there a result of the natural growth of forests over time. He cleared his throat and rubbed his chin pensively. He had found his distraction. 

The snake snapped his fingers. A moment passed before a servant approached him through the slider doors and kowtowed. 

“Ten thousand years and more to His Lordship. What may this servant assist His Lordship with?”

The snake bowed back. “If my sister Asceal or any of her children ask for me, tell them that I am out for a walk. Otherwise, continue your fantastic service.”

“Of course, Your Lordship. Have a safe walk.” The servant rose to her feet, bowed and walked backwards back into the chambres and through the doorway. The snake turned back to the railing, took a deep breath and jumped high up into the air, diving for the waters below. He pierced the surface with a near-silent plop and swam towards the Beihe waterfall. 

As he drifted lazily down the river, he noticed that it inundated over the usual banks - flood season was in effect. He noted the contrast between the Beihese and Nanhese floods: Whereas Nanhe would drag with it anything and everything foolish enough to not flee the rumbling waves, or simply too inanimate to do so, Beihe had a calmer aura about it, its floods merely brushing up against the surrounding vegetation and caressing them affectionately. The river near doubled in width, yes, but it did not leave the wake of destruction of its southern brother. Instead, it filled the surrounding valley with nutritious silt and clay that make the trees grow exceptionally green. Still, though, the river and the surrounding lands were largely empty. He heard the faint ooks and howls of frog monkeys on the edges of the southern jungle, even seeing one squatting casually in a nearby tree, nibbling on a banana. The occasional boar trundled over to the riverbank to slurp its waters. One of them gave the snake a confused oink. 

The snake swam on for a little longer, rolling onto his back and letting the current carry him on. What kind of life would he create here? Naturally, the rivers should be bountiful with all the usual creatures: fish, amphibians, insects and birds. Yet he wanted to do something new… Something symbiotic. He looked back to the farmer apes. He had been quite satisfied with that creation - a creature codependent on another, like an eternal brotherhood in which one would always thrive if the other did. 

“Harmony,” he mumbled happily to himself. 

He would repeat this formula: a creature living in symbiosis with another and the two working together to prosper. Although… What if the creature was dependent on something else? Not a mortal creature that could one day fail it, but an immortal natural phenomenon that was relatively stable? The snake swam over to the river bank, scaring away a few squealing boars in the process. He scooped his hand into the muddy bank bed and extracted a handful of silt. He dipped two fingers from his other hand into the silt and rubbed it between his fingers. Yes, yes… The life of Beihe would not only benefit from the floods - they would prosper!

The snake picked a few surrounding reeds, seeds, flowers and rocks. He rubbed the silt all over a handful of reeds. The reeds sprouted rows of white seeds in one end, big, nutritious and crunchy seeds encapsulated in green leaves for protection; the length of the reed grew until it could stand in the flood without endangering the seeds. The snake grinned and stabbed the reed into the soil. Soon, thousands like it sprouted up from under the water surface on both banks, following the length of the river downwards and upwards.

“Rice… While I have eaten much of you aboard my ship, you are the first of your kind on Galbar. You will begin to grow in spring and spread your seeds in the flood season, so that you may prosper all across the river and feed the fish which corpses also feed you. Speaking of…” 

The snake rubbed the rock with some river silt and smashed it with his fish. He cast the muddy dust into the surrounding waters. After a moment, fish heads, frog heads, bird heads and more popped up from under the surface with confused quacks and croaks. The snake harvested some rice seeds and threw them into the river before them, inciting a mess of splashes and sploshes as the creatures scrambled for the food. After they all had eaten their fills, the snake smirked and gestured to the river.

“All this and more will be yours in exchange for your servitude to Beihe,” he said to the creatures, who looked at him quizzically. “This whole river will be full of food and richest for you to eat and covet, yet a price is to be paid: Your waste, and ultimately your bodies, will go to nourishing the surrounding life. Do this, and your lives are yours to govern.” The animals looked at one another, then made what sounds they could to show their agreement. The snake nodded and took the seeds in his hand. He rubbed them in with clay as with the others and tossed them into the yellow, silt-rich waters. The seeds grew small fins and began to swim towards the edges of the water, were they became all manner of green, yellow and brown reeds and grasses that flourished along the banks.

“You will serve as the homes and houses for the life in the river,” he spoke to the reeds. “You will be the forests for those under the water, hiding them from predators. Do this, and the floods will bring silt aplenty for you to thrive in.” The reeds and grasses danced in the wind as if voicing their will. The snake grinned and looked at the final item in his hand: a flower. He rubbed it in with silt, snapped it in half and tossed one half to the left and the other to the right. They fell down on opposites sides of the river, immediately sprouting into a visual symphony of colours on the riverbanks. Merely seconds after peeking up from the soil, the flowers sprouted, filling the local atmosphere with sweet, fruity scents. The snake walked over to one of them and dipped his fingernail into the gooey centre of one of the blooms - it popped quietly and shot forth a small squirt of sweet nectar. The snake raised his finger to his face and inspected thoroughly the green, sweet slime. He dabbed the nail on his tongue and rolled the flavour around.

“Ah… A longtsao relative, I see,” he mused with a smile. “So be it. Like the rice, you flowers shall bloom at certain times in the seasonal cycle - you shall open your petals for pollinators in the spring and truly reveal your scents and colours when the floods come. Your nectar will support those that drink it, just as they will support you by spreading your pollen, and your deaths will support the river. Do this, and the silt shall run thick for you.”

The air grew even sweeter as the flowers oozed their will. Though the snake was a little unsatisfied. Who would drink from these flowers? The fish could not reach up; the frogs were too heavy to sit on the petals; the birds were too large to stick their beaks inside most of them…

He thought back to the insects in Nanhe and Lihe. He was certain he had seen some of them zoom about in the air before - and some that had sat themselves on top of a blooming longtsao and drunk deep in its ginger-like juices. The snake took a ball of silt in his hand and slapped it onto the river bank. Then he took another ball and added it. He poked a hole in the bottom front and snapped his fingers.

A moment passed. Then another. Then, however, a small, furry, six-legged insect with orange and black stripes along its back and a large, white spot on its bottom came clumsily crawling out of the hole, followed by several others who were slightly smaller. They whizzed their wings free of moisture and looked at the snake quizzically. The snake smiled at the little bumblebees.

“Hello there, little ones. Your existence shall revolve around drinking the nectar of these flowers and carrying their pollen on to their neighbours. You will live in moist silt hive in the flood seasons, and for this, I make you both capable diggers and swimmers.” He pointed to the largest of the bumblebees. “When the flood nears its end, you will use what little nectar remains to feed your queen so that she may fly on to a new home next season. Remain true to your tasks, though, and the queen will always find a home.”

The bumblebees buzzed eagerly in agreement before the queen trundled back into the silt hive and the drones flew off to gather nectar. The snake grinned from horn to horn as he gazed out across the blossoming Beihe. The north would perhaps be a little too moist and hot for many of these creatures, but at least the middle of the river would be safe and temperate. 

The snake sighed as he gazed to the Saluran Mendidih once more. Such a gruesome sabotage, but not a deterring one. Life would blossom on this continent regardless of the cruelty of other gods. He would see to that.

The snake turned to the Giant’s Bath. He had been gone long enough. It was about time he returned home to his guests.

[hider=Local snake turns barren river into a paradise]
Snake is angry that he underestimated the dragons, so he goes to Beihe to get his mind off things. There, he makes an ecosystem that revolves around the Beihese floods. Among other things, he makes rice that grows in rivers, fish, frogs, ducks and so on. He also creates flowers and bumblebees resistant to water and floods. He then returns home.
[/hider]

[hider=MP Summary]
Starting MP/FP: 2/6

Spent 2MP on creating a seasonal ecosystem that blossoms in the flood season. 4/5MP (8/10FP) towards Harvest.

End MP/FP: 0/6.
[/hider]