"Dammit, dammit, Dammit!"
Cursing with every drop of venom he could muster, Han Xuhan flattened himself against the walls, his eyes locked on the churning clouds above, which had come down way too low, some of the wisps almost touching the top of the second wall, a mere height of seven meters approximately.
The silent lightning bolts pulsed as if the entire chunk of cloud was a leviathan and the lightnings were its restless veins. Ghost cultivators...what else was he going to encounter in his mere entrance into the world of cultivation? These sorts of plot twists are supposed to be the material for a whole new arc in some shady secret realm!
Did the author decide to rush the plot? But his story, Mu Ran's story, or even Yuen Zhou's story had barely begun!
As far as he knew, ghost cultivators were practitioners whose cultivation techniques were centered around soul manipulation. A quote by an anonymous Daoist was recorded in a scroll on this topic, which the elders had referred to during the relevant lessons a few days ago.
The dao a ghost pursues is not the dao man should pursue. The dao a ghost understands is not a dao man can understand. The dao encompasses all we see. Ghosts see what we cannot see, and do not wish to see. For the dao encompassing the vision of the dead is against the vision of the living. It is as incompatible as fire and water. This makes ghost cultivators a body of practitioners hellbent on the destruction of one's humanity. But once you've tasted the flavor of death, destruction of the human self is hardly a future you'd fear.
The entire quote swayed between the lines of 'profound' and 'edgy' like a pendulum. It made sense that the Daoist concealed his own name. Otherwise, he'd probably be laughed at in the old monster community. Even he, a noob in the world of cultivation, had rolled his eyes by the end of that passage.
Now though...now he didn't quite find the guts to laugh at what stirred above his head.
Hong Wei hadn't still returned with help. Shangguang Ce's condition showed no signs of stabilization either. The guy sat unmovingly, his mouth spewing some of the bullshit Han Xuhan had spouted in order to keep up his act as a retard.
When had enlightenments become so cheap?
Oh, wait, if someone as mediocre as him could gain one, maybe it HAD really become cheap...
Had his enlightenment been like this as well? Perhaps with clouds of different colors and less threatening lightning bolts?
He had no idea. He hadn't gotten the opportunity to talk about it with any of the witnesses.
In fact, now that he thought about it, how would an enlightenment help him advance in cultivation anyway? It wasn't as if he could summon entirely new souls from the Burning World just in one sitting to advance his Skeletal Monarch Technique. He needed to construct the skeleton first, accurately down to every tiny joint. Countless hours of qi cycling couldn't be compensated by a measly two-minute 'Big Brain' moment.
Han Xuhan quickly pushed away these temporarily unnecessary concerns. He had to look for a quick escape route first.
The walls were just too high, dammi-
Han Xuhan's curse hit a wall as a realization dawned on him.
He was a cultivator at the fourth layer of the physique transformation realm. A three-meter-high wall might prove to be an insurmountable obstacle to a mortal, but was that the same for him?
The ten-meter gap between the first and second walls was a substantial distance. He could gain a small momentum here by running four or five steps.
Without a second thought, Han Xuhan dug his feet on the hard-wait, the floor was made up of concrete!
Briefly, Xuhan recalled some of the key moments of his encounter with these cultivators.
The Sunrider Sect boasted of quasi-modern artillery, having combined the magic of cultivation with rudimentary machinery.
Their disciples spoke in foreign dialects and thought of aerodynamics as basic concepts everyone knew.
Even their construction capability far outstripped the current era.
The initial seed of doubt that had sprouted during his first contact with the Sunrider Sect grew into a giant network of possibilities and schemes.
While his mind was embroiled in a web of the current, as well as future events, his body didn't stay still. Left in the wake of his rush were rough footprints on the hard concrete, spraying tiny broken pieces at the wall behind.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
As if compensating for the lack of thunder, his footsteps reverberated throughout the maze. In a flash, he was just two steps away from the peripheral wall. Gathering all the force he could muster, Han Xuhan leaped up.
"Ack-"
His midsection crashed against the top of the wall, sending waves of pain throughout his body, squeezing out all the air from his lungs. The three-meter wall had been but a fraction over his current capabilities. With a bit of practice and a formal jumping technique, he could probably jump past this height easily without even running.
Han Xuhan clutched the top of the wall and swung the rest of his body over, surprised by how little effort went into the feat.
Taking a deep breath, he gave one last look at the meditating young man named Shangguang Ce.
So long, brother! I wish you a smooth breakthrough, which I'll not be witnessing.
His good wishes kept silent in order not to disturb Brother Ce, Han Xuhan leaped down past the peripheral wall and ran like the wind. He had never tried running at the fastest speed he could reach after he had reached the fourth layer. No better an occasion than now to test that out!
Leaving the giant flux of black clouds behind, Han Xuhan rushed toward the edge of the floating island and looked down. His heels dug up soil, grass, and small rocks like a drilling machine. He could almost see a trail being formed following his track.
According to his theory of stacked spatial folds, the bottom of the island would definitely not contain other sects but the sea itself just like the arrangement in the fold of the Crimson Snow Sect.
He was proved correct, as he reached the edge of the island and his gaze landed below.
The sea was the only thing beneath the Sunrider Sect's island as well.
There were only two possibilities he could think of right now regarding this arrangement. Either a mind-blowing illusion spell had been laid down around every island to mask each sect from the other sects' prying eyes. Or his previous conjecture of stacked spatial regions allotted for each sect was really true. Due to the small clue he had heard from Shangguang Ce, Han Xuhan was inclined to believe the latter possibility even though the former seemed more realistic.
But he did not have the guts to bank on that belief to execute his final escape plan. He did not feel like jumping down from the edge of the island to see whether he would land on the sea, or reach a different sect. Nope!
Distraught, Han Xuhan looked up, hoping to see a shadow of the island of the Crimson Snow Sect. The black cloud surrounding Shangguang Ce did not reach this far, and he could properly see the blue sky.
Right then, he witnessed one of the most bizarre things in his short life.
Not too far from where he was standing, there was an area fifty meters above where an anomaly was taking place. Bursts of water were appearing out of empty air, being sprayed powerfully in all directions. It was as if someone had hidden an invisible hose pipe at that height, and its mouth was beginning to leak due to the pressure inside.
Hssss! Hssss!
A second spray appeared by the time he has recovered from the shock, this one much closer to him. He could clearly see how the bursts of water were being conjured out of nowhere. No sources could be seen or sensed at all!
Taking a few steps forward, Han Xuhan reached below the second one and put his hand under the falling waterdrops.
Cupping a few drops, he tasted it cautiously. The taste was very familiar!
Salty, heavy...
Han Xuhan's eyes widened to the maximum as the realization occurred to him.
Was this how the seawater had appeared back on the Crimson Snow Sect's island?!
The odd flood of water from the sky could clearly have originated from such a source! Except, there would have to be numerous other places from which a huge amount of water would have to leak out in a short span of a few seconds. That would be the only way to flood an entire island so fast!
Han Xuhan looked up once more and felt a chill forming in his heart, because...there were three more places in the sky where sprays of water had appeared.
Oh boy.
His eyes flickered each time a new spray appeared, taking note of the distance between each source of the water, the shapes and sizes of each 'fountain', the pressure behind each spray.
The clear sky above the Sunrider Sect soon became awash with innumerable jets of water. The rainfall they caused was so thick that Han Xuhan couldn't even register the whole phenomenon in his mind by the time his feet were submerged by the accumulating water.
The bursts of water could no longer be called mere sprays now. These were jets, voluminous and powerful enough to reach dozens of meters from their origin points.
"Shit, shit, shit, SHIT!"
Han Xuhan spun on his heels and sprinted back toward the walls. Unlike the Crimson Snow Sect, the Sunrider Sect had no mountains for him to take shelter on. The periphery of the island was completely bare and flat. If he stayed still and waited for the water to accumulate higher, he'd be taken past the edge of the Island along with the robust current, right down to the sea hundreds of meters below.
For the second time, he crashed into the peripheral wall, this time from the opposite direction, his ribs letting out audible protests to the abuse. The water had made it impossible for him to gather a strong momentum by running.
Glancing back, Han Xuhan saw the water level showing no signs of ebbing away, rather the opposite. The three-meter-high peripheral wall was about to be engulfed very soon.
Before the rising water level could, he slipped on the other side of the wall, falling face first just a dozen meters away from Shangguang Ce.
His meditating friend did not seem aware of the fact that one-third of his body had been already submerged in seawater, a ratio that was about to climb high enough to drown him by the next thirty seconds according to Han Xuhan's estimation. Since the jets of water were being produced almost everywhere above the island, no place was truly safe except the top of the walls.
"Did that girl die on her way to find an elder?" He couldn't help but curse as he got to his feet. From above, seawater spilled on his head continuously. It was hard to think under such circumstances. He could not get out of this maze right now. He could only choose the option containing lesser possibilities of instant death– entering deeper inside the maze, right into the heart of the Sunrider Sect, a nest of ghost cultivators.
But as he took a good look at the second wall, his hopes of getting past it by himself vanished. It was at least seven meters high. The ground he stood on was no longer suitable for running- because at that point he was knee-deep in the water flooding the space between the two walls.
"Well, at least I can swim. The powerful waves outside have been halted by the peripheral wall for now. If I manage to stay afloat here and stick to this wall, the water level will eventually carry me to the top of the second wall."
Han Xuhan's self-consolation trailed off as his eyes caught Shangguang Ce's body, which was now chest-deep in water. His tribulation clouds neither receded nor attacked. Perhaps it was going to be a lengthy enlightenment, if he survived the tournament's routine trial this time.
"I should be more worried about myself. In the past, I used to hate those busybody protagonists risking their lives for others. How can I turn into one of them now?" Xuhan muttered, trying to focus on the fact that he'd have to swim desperately once the water level rose beyond the first wall. He had enough on his own plate without the responsibility of someone else's life; someone who probably did not even have good intentions toward him.
A tiny voice inside his head asked a question that he couldn't quite answer– "but are you really a protagonist? You're supposed to avoid falling into templates. Now you're just acting like those ruthless, selfish ones."
The water level rose to Shangguang Ce's mouth five seconds later. Han Xuhan forcibly tore off his gaze from the sight, trying to drown out the hesitant voice of protest in a tiny corner of his heart.
The water level rose past his nose. Shangguang Ce visibly shuddered, the red lightning streaks above pulsed as if mirroring his struggle.
With a long, deep breath, Han Xuhan concentrated hard, trying to execute a particularly complicated qi formation inside his body in a standing position. Three seconds later, Zhanxian, Tun Shi Tian, and little Zhe leaped out from his back one by one and fell into the water, screaming partly in fear and partly from excitement. Han Xuhan decided to ignore the former of the two apparent emotions from his minions.
"We need to get past that wall," he said in a dull tone.
The three minions exchanged brief looks around and exploded into motion.
Tun Shi Tian flew up on top of the second wall. Zhanxian grabbed little Zhe by the tail and threw her at the owl who caught the snake in a single swoop. As a 'cultivator' at the first layer of the physique transformation realm', Tun Shi Tian was considerably strong; and it showed as he confidently used little Zhe's body like a rope for someone to latch on to.
Han Xuhan grabbed Zhanxian and threw the skeleton at little Zhe's hanging body. He wasn't sure whether Tun Shi Tian would be able to drag Shangguang Ce up, or whether little Zhe's body would be durable enough to bear his weight.
In the end, he had failed to follow the code of an ideal xianxia character who would survive for more than a few arcs. He could neither be ruthless to himself, nor had he the heart to watch a stranger die when he COULD attempt to save him.
It was almost laughable. He, a character proficient on the dao of meta, was about to fail the golden rule of 'ruthlessness'.
"This better fucking pay off. No-fuck, I'll MAKE this little stunt pay off," he muttered as he half-walked, half-swum to the fully submerged body of his new 'friend'.
"Dammit, dammit, Dammit!"
Cursing with every drop of venom he could muster, Han Xuhan flattened himself against the walls, his eyes locked on the churning clouds above, which had come down way too low, some of the wisps almost touching the top of the second wall, a mere height of seven meters approximately.
The silent lightning bolts pulsed as if the entire chunk of cloud was a leviathan and the lightnings were its restless veins. Ghost cultivators...what else was he going to encounter in his mere entrance into the world of cultivation? These sorts of plot twists are supposed to be the material for a whole new arc in some shady secret realm!
Did the author decide to rush the plot? But his story, Mu Ran's story, or even Yuen Zhou's story had barely begun!
As far as he knew, ghost cultivators were practitioners whose cultivation techniques were centered around soul manipulation. A quote by an anonymous Daoist was recorded in a scroll on this topic, which the elders had referred to during the relevant lessons a few days ago.
The dao a ghost pursues is not the dao man should pursue. The dao a ghost understands is not a dao man can understand. The dao encompasses all we see. Ghosts see what we cannot see, and do not wish to see. For the dao encompassing the vision of the dead is against the vision of the living. It is as incompatible as fire and water. This makes ghost cultivators a body of practitioners hellbent on the destruction of one's humanity. But once you've tasted the flavor of death, destruction of the human self is hardly a future you'd fear.
The entire quote swayed between the lines of 'profound' and 'edgy' like a pendulum. It made sense that the Daoist concealed his own name. Otherwise, he'd probably be laughed at in the old monster community. Even he, a noob in the world of cultivation, had rolled his eyes by the end of that passage.
Now though...now he didn't quite find the guts to laugh at what stirred above his head.
Hong Wei hadn't still returned with help. Shangguang Ce's condition showed no signs of stabilization either. The guy sat unmovingly, his mouth spewing some of the bullshit Han Xuhan had spouted in order to keep up his act as a retard.
When had enlightenments become so cheap?
Oh, wait, if someone as mediocre as him could gain one, maybe it HAD really become cheap...
Had his enlightenment been like this as well? Perhaps with clouds of different colors and less threatening lightning bolts?
He had no idea. He hadn't gotten the opportunity to talk about it with any of the witnesses.
In fact, now that he thought about it, how would an enlightenment help him advance in cultivation anyway? It wasn't as if he could summon entirely new souls from the Burning World just in one sitting to advance his Skeletal Monarch Technique. He needed to construct the skeleton first, accurately down to every tiny joint. Countless hours of qi cycling couldn't be compensated by a measly two-minute 'Big Brain' moment.
Han Xuhan quickly pushed away these temporarily unnecessary concerns. He had to look for a quick escape route first.
The walls were just too high, dammi-
Han Xuhan's curse hit a wall as a realization dawned on him.
He was a cultivator at the fourth layer of the physique transformation realm. A three-meter-high wall might prove to be an insurmountable obstacle to a mortal, but was that the same for him?
The ten-meter gap between the first and second walls was a substantial distance. He could gain a small momentum here by running four or five steps.
Without a second thought, Han Xuhan dug his feet on the hard-wait, the floor was made up of concrete!
Briefly, Xuhan recalled some of the key moments of his encounter with these cultivators.
The Sunrider Sect boasted of quasi-modern artillery, having combined the magic of cultivation with rudimentary machinery.
Their disciples spoke in foreign dialects and thought of aerodynamics as basic concepts everyone knew.
Even their construction capability far outstripped the current era.
The initial seed of doubt that had sprouted during his first contact with the Sunrider Sect grew into a giant network of possibilities and schemes.
While his mind was embroiled in a web of the current, as well as future events, his body didn't stay still. Left in the wake of his rush were rough footprints on the hard concrete, spraying tiny broken pieces at the wall behind.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
As if compensating for the lack of thunder, his footsteps reverberated throughout the maze. In a flash, he was just two steps away from the peripheral wall. Gathering all the force he could muster, Han Xuhan leaped up.
"Ack-"
His midsection crashed against the top of the wall, sending waves of pain throughout his body, squeezing out all the air from his lungs. The three-meter wall had been but a fraction over his current capabilities. With a bit of practice and a formal jumping technique, he could probably jump past this height easily without even running.
Han Xuhan clutched the top of the wall and swung the rest of his body over, surprised by how little effort went into the feat.
Taking a deep breath, he gave one last look at the meditating young man named Shangguang Ce.
So long, brother! I wish you a smooth breakthrough, which I'll not be witnessing.
His good wishes kept silent in order not to disturb Brother Ce, Han Xuhan leaped down past the peripheral wall and ran like the wind. He had never tried running at the fastest speed he could reach after he had reached the fourth layer. No better an occasion than now to test that out!
Leaving the giant flux of black clouds behind, Han Xuhan rushed toward the edge of the floating island and looked down. His heels dug up soil, grass, and small rocks like a drilling machine. He could almost see a trail being formed following his track.
According to his theory of stacked spatial folds, the bottom of the island would definitely not contain other sects but the sea itself just like the arrangement in the fold of the Crimson Snow Sect.
He was proved correct, as he reached the edge of the island and his gaze landed below.
The sea was the only thing beneath the Sunrider Sect's island as well.
There were only two possibilities he could think of right now regarding this arrangement. Either a mind-blowing illusion spell had been laid down around every island to mask each sect from the other sects' prying eyes. Or his previous conjecture of stacked spatial regions allotted for each sect was really true. Due to the small clue he had heard from Shangguang Ce, Han Xuhan was inclined to believe the latter possibility even though the former seemed more realistic.
But he did not have the guts to bank on that belief to execute his final escape plan. He did not feel like jumping down from the edge of the island to see whether he would land on the sea, or reach a different sect. Nope!
Distraught, Han Xuhan looked up, hoping to see a shadow of the island of the Crimson Snow Sect. The black cloud surrounding Shangguang Ce did not reach this far, and he could properly see the blue sky.
Right then, he witnessed one of the most bizarre things in his short life.
Not too far from where he was standing, there was an area fifty meters above where an anomaly was taking place. Bursts of water were appearing out of empty air, being sprayed powerfully in all directions. It was as if someone had hidden an invisible hose pipe at that height, and its mouth was beginning to leak due to the pressure inside.
Hssss! Hssss!
A second spray appeared by the time he has recovered from the shock, this one much closer to him. He could clearly see how the bursts of water were being conjured out of nowhere. No sources could be seen or sensed at all!
Taking a few steps forward, Han Xuhan reached below the second one and put his hand under the falling waterdrops.
Cupping a few drops, he tasted it cautiously. The taste was very familiar!
Salty, heavy...
Han Xuhan's eyes widened to the maximum as the realization occurred to him.
Was this how the seawater had appeared back on the Crimson Snow Sect's island?!
The odd flood of water from the sky could clearly have originated from such a source! Except, there would have to be numerous other places from which a huge amount of water would have to leak out in a short span of a few seconds. That would be the only way to flood an entire island so fast!
Han Xuhan looked up once more and felt a chill forming in his heart, because...there were three more places in the sky where sprays of water had appeared.
Oh boy.
His eyes flickered each time a new spray appeared, taking note of the distance between each source of the water, the shapes and sizes of each 'fountain', the pressure behind each spray.
The clear sky above the Sunrider Sect soon became awash with innumerable jets of water. The rainfall they caused was so thick that Han Xuhan couldn't even register the whole phenomenon in his mind by the time his feet were submerged by the accumulating water.
The bursts of water could no longer be called mere sprays now. These were jets, voluminous and powerful enough to reach dozens of meters from their origin points.
"Shit, shit, shit, SHIT!"
Han Xuhan spun on his heels and sprinted back toward the walls. Unlike the Crimson Snow Sect, the Sunrider Sect had no mountains for him to take shelter on. The periphery of the island was completely bare and flat. If he stayed still and waited for the water to accumulate higher, he'd be taken past the edge of the Island along with the robust current, right down to the sea hundreds of meters below.
For the second time, he crashed into the peripheral wall, this time from the opposite direction, his ribs letting out audible protests to the abuse. The water had made it impossible for him to gather a strong momentum by running.
Glancing back, Han Xuhan saw the water level showing no signs of ebbing away, rather the opposite. The three-meter-high peripheral wall was about to be engulfed very soon.
Before the rising water level could, he slipped on the other side of the wall, falling face first just a dozen meters away from Shangguang Ce.
His meditating friend did not seem aware of the fact that one-third of his body had been already submerged in seawater, a ratio that was about to climb high enough to drown him by the next thirty seconds according to Han Xuhan's estimation. Since the jets of water were being produced almost everywhere above the island, no place was truly safe except the top of the walls.
"Did that girl die on her way to find an elder?" He couldn't help but curse as he got to his feet. From above, seawater spilled on his head continuously. It was hard to think under such circumstances. He could not get out of this maze right now. He could only choose the option containing lesser possibilities of instant death– entering deeper inside the maze, right into the heart of the Sunrider Sect, a nest of ghost cultivators.
But as he took a good look at the second wall, his hopes of getting past it by himself vanished. It was at least seven meters high. The ground he stood on was no longer suitable for running- because at that point he was knee-deep in the water flooding the space between the two walls.
"Well, at least I can swim. The powerful waves outside have been halted by the peripheral wall for now. If I manage to stay afloat here and stick to this wall, the water level will eventually carry me to the top of the second wall."
Han Xuhan's self-consolation trailed off as his eyes caught Shangguang Ce's body, which was now chest-deep in water. His tribulation clouds neither receded nor attacked. Perhaps it was going to be a lengthy enlightenment, if he survived the tournament's routine trial this time.
"I should be more worried about myself. In the past, I used to hate those busybody protagonists risking their lives for others. How can I turn into one of them now?" Xuhan muttered, trying to focus on the fact that he'd have to swim desperately once the water level rose beyond the first wall. He had enough on his own plate without the responsibility of someone else's life; someone who probably did not even have good intentions toward him.
A tiny voice inside his head asked a question that he couldn't quite answer– "but are you really a protagonist? You're supposed to avoid falling into templates. Now you're just acting like those ruthless, selfish ones."
The water level rose to Shangguang Ce's mouth five seconds later. Han Xuhan forcibly tore off his gaze from the sight, trying to drown out the hesitant voice of protest in a tiny corner of his heart.
The water level rose past his nose. Shangguang Ce visibly shuddered, the red lightning streaks above pulsed as if mirroring his struggle.
With a long, deep breath, Han Xuhan concentrated hard, trying to execute a particularly complicated qi formation inside his body in a standing position. Three seconds later, Zhanxian, Tun Shi Tian, and little Zhe leaped out from his back one by one and fell into the water, screaming partly in fear and partly from excitement. Han Xuhan decided to ignore the former of the two apparent emotions from his minions.
"We need to get past that wall," he said in a dull tone.
The three minions exchanged brief looks around and exploded into motion.
Tun Shi Tian flew up on top of the second wall. Zhanxian grabbed little Zhe by the tail and threw her at the owl who caught the snake in a single swoop. As a 'cultivator' at the first layer of the physique transformation realm', Tun Shi Tian was considerably strong; and it showed as he confidently used little Zhe's body like a rope for someone to latch on to.
Han Xuhan grabbed Zhanxian and threw the skeleton at little Zhe's hanging body. He wasn't sure whether Tun Shi Tian would be able to drag Shangguang Ce up, or whether little Zhe's body would be durable enough to bear his weight.
In the end, he had failed to follow the code of an ideal xianxia character who would survive for more than a few arcs. He could neither be ruthless to himself, nor had he the heart to watch a stranger die when he COULD attempt to save him.
It was almost laughable. He, a character proficient on the dao of meta, was about to fail the golden rule of 'ruthlessness'.
"This better fucking pay off. No-fuck, I'll MAKE this little stunt pay off," he muttered as he half-walked, half-swum to the fully submerged body of his new 'friend'.
