Chapter 148

  Great Questions (III)

  It was perfect.

  No, it was more than perfect.

  Wan Lan's hands trembled as she read through the art her forced-upon-her Master just handed her not two minutes ago.

  She didn't actually think too much of it--why would she? She knew better than anyone just how restrictive her physique was and that practically only the Demonic Cult itself had arts that she could use. A random Elder of some random two-bit Sect that was destroyed in the span of a few hours?

  He would naturally not have anything she could use.

  And yet...

  The more she stared at the words and pictures, at the depiction of Demonic Qi practically vandalizing meridians, the more she realized that it wasn't just that she could use the art, no... it went far beyond that.

  The reality was that only she could use it. Even if Madame, while she could still cultivate, tried using it, it would have been impossible. Demonic Qi, by its nature, wasn't necessarily violent, but it was destructive--at least more so than 'ordinary' Qi. It wasn't some sentient form of destruction; it was more a comparison between a bush fire and a forest fire. Both are the same at their cores; it was just that one of them had far more fuel to burn.

  That was the case with Demonic Qi--it was denser than ordinary Qi, which was why all practitioners of Demonic Qi had to have unique physiques or, at the very least, had to have undergone a 'Death' to reforge their meridians. But even among them, among all the demonic cultivators, she was slightly special; her meridians, naturally, were extremely firm and sturdy.

  She could coalesce twice as much Qi twice as fast compared to most of her peers, and this art... perfectly took advantage of that. It would radiate out a massive surge of Qi anywhere she was attacked, ignoring 'restrictions' of natural meridians, focusing exclusively on the explosive speed.

  There was no way that he simply had it 'lying around'--even Madame would have fainted upon the sight of something like this, and Wan Lan was fairly certain that the Demon God himself would not have had an art like this to give her.

  Which left her with one option: he'd made it.

  Her strange, frail, oddly behaving Master had made an art that not even a Demon God could.

  It was a terrifying thought as it opened up two possibilities, neither one of which was particularly 'comforting': either her Master was an old monster deeply hiding and roleplaying as an average Elder and a Master to a bunch of kids, or he was an ordinary man with just one oddity to him.

  Except that oddity was heaven-defying.

  She steadied her breathing forcibly and put the tome down on her lap.

  Having been trounced like never before in her life just today, she'd already realized that this inconspicuous-seeming band of oddities was all but ordinary. Senior Brother Tao--she just then realized she'd actually subconsciously started thinking of him that way--was not merely a prodigy. He was like those heavenly chosen in the old myths, where the heavens themselves would go out of their way to gift them things.

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  Walking into a random forest? No, it just so happened that the forest was once a raging battlefield, and the hero unearths an ancient sword spirit that teaches him a legendary, long-lost art.

  Camping out in the mountains after running away from some bandits? An ordinary cave? No! It's a secret passage to an underground chamber holding the long-lost legacy of an Emperor that just happens to give him all the tools needed to handle the bandits.

  ... this art, she realized, felt like that. It wasn't that it would allow her to overcome the Senior Brother, far from it, but it would propel her far further than she thought she could go. Even having just broken through into the Foundation Establishment at the age of sixteen was a cause for celebration and made her one of the talents of her generation, but with the art...

  She was confident she'd be able to contend against even the peak Spirit Manifestation Realm cultivators.

  At least those without any equivalent trump cards.

  And, by Senior Brother's implications, it was likely that they all had an art or two not unlike this one.

  Perhaps that was why her Master was frail and weak-seeming; the heavens deemed it far beyond unfair to be both a talent at cultivation and someone capable of creating heaven-defying arts, so they gave him a body barely better than that of a mortal.

  She shook her head and opened the book up yet again--she didn't want to waste a second more not learning it. Before they reached north, while the others would have to break through into the Foundation Establishment, she swore she would master the Aegis, even if it killed her.

  **

  The beatings.

  They were back.

  Well, they called them 'spars', I suppose, but there was very little sparring from what I could gather and a lot of ass-kicking.

  The first day, it was just standard one-on-one duels as Long Tao waxed on and off about a billion small things other kids (including Wan Lan) should do to improve their fighting abilities.

  The second day, he just dropped all pretenses, had them all attack him at once, and promptly beat them until they were comatose.

  No joke, if a kid didn't have a bruise the size of a melon somewhere on their head, they were not allowed to rest.

  So, as I was forced into the role of a freakin' nurse, just shuttling the passed-out kids to their beds and feeding them as many healing pills as I could, Long Tao would stay outside and cultivate.

  Though I say he was doing it for fun (and at least part of him did), I also did notice a sense of... urgency within him. I had it too, to be honest; there were very few things ever spoken about the 'North Beyond the Mountains', and none of them were good. Supposedly, a good chunk of it was perpetually cloaked in shadow and darkness of the night, some kind of cloudy, ashen mist covering the sky.

  The few books that mentioned it all said it's a hive of murderers and escaped convicts, and that you can't go sixteen yards without meeting a thief.

  I'm assuming that the reason we're moving there is precisely that--Long Tao is determined for us to attend that symposium or whatever in three years' time, but to essentially 'qualify' for it, it's not like we can just meander about randomly for three years with thumbs up our asses.

  "We're being followed," right, of course. I looked over at the tent's entrance, where he was casually leaning, as though he had said something utterly inane like, 'There are rabbits screwing right over there'.

  "How many?"

  "A few," he said. "They're not particularly strong, so we should probably lure them in and have kids train a bit on them."

  "..." yeah.

  This guy's freakin' nuts.

  "Did you ever consider that they aren't following us for nefarious reasons?" I mean, I was pulling shit out of my ass (for once, not literally), and doing so just out of pure spite. Of course they were following us so they could rob or kill us, especially since they were cultivators.

  "No," he fired back like a pistol, prompting me to sigh.

  "Fine," I shrugged. "Let the kids rest and recover, and you can take them to play."

  ... Just what is happening to me, I wonder? I just casually called what is likely (definitely) going to be a whole lotta killing 'play'.

  Hey, system, scan me and tell me if I'm being possessed by anything!

  [--system ensures that the Host will never experience a possession of any kind. Any and all psychological changes Host experiences are a natural result of human nature and the environment]

  Yeah.

  That's what I was afraid of.

  ... hmm? Wait. Did the system just reply to me?! Hey, system! Give me some treasures!

  ...

  Ah. It's gone again.