"What is happening?!"
The ground was shaking violently, the commotion enough to silence the cries of the Baron's cattle. The blood gathered in the Goblet began to tremble and rumble, large swaths of the molten red material landed on the edges of the crater. Nearby hovels were filled with the molten liquid. Safe to say that the lowest levels within that hole were in the most danger...
But why would that matter? For the lower the hovel, the less precious the material. So long as the mid to upper levels of cattle were preserved, everything was fine. With good material the Baron's band of flesh harvesters could always start again, the exact same way they had nearly two hundred years ago. Rapidly grow their livestock and firmly hold onto the seat of power.
If that moment, that brief exposure to danger, was all that occurred.
The reason for the Goblet's constant sloshing was something much more sinister. The very land they rest upon was gradually sinking lower and lower. The nearby ocean spilled in, red and blue waves of the molten, crimson liquid and cool water fought respectively. The immediate temperature drop of that superheated material created a frozen ruby wasteland that stretched across the horizon...
Until it met a wall.
A projection of land so large it could hardly be called a platform. No, it was as if a continent had been pushed from below by a titan. As if Atlas himself was acting in favoritism and had chosen to save just this land, just this continent. That place which lay just beyond the Baron's scarlet valley. It stood atop all others, like a shining ray from the sun, a signifier of times changing and of the arrival of another contender for Godhood. The newest arrival since the Bloody Baron and his band of flesh seekers all those years ago.
"What does this mean? Are we being targeted? Who could even do something like this?!" The Baron's men shouted between one another. This couldn't be anything less than a declaration of war, they had no way of knowing that the perpetrator was a long forgotten old man that had no allies or intentions, other than revenge.
Instead, hypotheses led to misconstructions, and misconstructions to falsehoods, falsehoods to conspiracies and theories that held no ground in reality.
"The elemental kingdoms and their leaders are allying together and have come to attack, they'll wipe us off of the map!" They would cry.
Fear became a harbinger within the Baron's Bloody Goblet. It gripped both the cultivators and the cattle within it's walls. Eventually it would reach and wrap its creepy little fingers around even the Baron.
Why now?
Two men, mediocre cultivators. Barely halfway down the dining table. They were innocuous and unimportant. Yet, all the same they looked out from atop the craterous hole, that was their master's land, and gaped at the red wastage below.
"It doesn't make any sense... Why attack now? And if they were going to, why didn't they send us even lower? The best we could manage in that case is encasing the Goblet in molten blood. Then we'd be trapped and the heat from the Earth would be enough to finish us, if the lack of air doesn't kill us all first." One said as much to himself as to his companion. Truly, should their continent have sunk even further then it would be a slow but assured death for most of the Baron's estate.
The answer was simple.
The perpetrator couldn't do that.
He lacked the strength, needed to consider other enemies, and was also utilizing the Baron against these shadows on the horizon. Was there a better way to gain a new ally than having the same enemies?
No, that old man would use whatever he could get his hands on. He would see them burn each other, and spit on them to put the fire out from atop his pedestal.
"Come to think of it... Don't you think the Baron has been acting strange lately?" The other man whispered.
"Oi, knock it off. If someone hears..." The first cultivator was ripped out of his thoughts. Even the hellish landscape of the raging water and magma wasn't enough to wane his fear of suspected insubordination.
"I'm not the only one thinking it. He rarely eats at meal time. I used to always be so afraid of looking at the top of that table, but now... I don't know, something isn't right."
"You don't think...?" Strange behaviour at a sudden juncture in one's life. It was incredibly rare. Especially for one that appeared youthful, if not grotesque, like the Baron. It was a second awakening.
"Who knows? It's still strange our Baron is letting the blood spill over the wastelands, now it really is a Scarlet Valley. So much blood wasted from the Goblet, why didn't he retrieve it all? He didn't even attempt to." Blood was the Baron's resource, his strength. Who would willingly make themselves weaker for no observable purpose?
"I've heard of similar strange behaviours, but that's..."
"See, it all makes sense if you think like that. Must be why the other leaders are choosing to attack once and for all." They were beginning to form the superstitions and conspiracies that naturally came to them. Like whispers on the wind they would travel to each and every corner of the Goblet.
"He's finally reaching it... Godhood." Sudden changes in palate and behaviour, retains strength but acts oddly. It was emblematic of the beginning stages of the second metamorphosis, from the flesh into God. Soon enough a cocoon would allow the Baron to gestate and transform, or at least word was beginning to spread that this would occur.
"The Bloody Goblet has been working endlessly for the last two centuries all to reach the goal of one man..."
"To think we'd get to see it in our lifetime! Pretty exciting, right?"
"Let's just hope we live to see the end of it. Even if it is the Baron, the rest of the world against him... I don't like our chances."
"What are we supposed to do in the meantime?" The other man asked worriedly.
"I don't know... Metamorphosis, ascension, it dictates a special meal. The very last thing that a mortal eats, their final rites before becoming more than a human, more than a cultivator. Whatever it is, the higher ups have probably been preparing it for years on end."
"The masters are always so prepared, huh?"
"Well, at the very least it won't be something we have to pay special attention to. The Baron's daily intake puts our weekly portion to shame. Both in grade and weight."
"True enough."
The two looked out to the endless scarlet valley once again... only this time the end was all too obvious to notice. That raised pillar of land, too large to be called anything other than a continent.
It appeared as if it were laughing at them from above.