Luckily he didn’t grow any female parts. The only change Alex noticed was him maturing for more than a decade. But it was no wonder – the self he merged with was close to thirty years old. Alex expected this, but for some reason felt annoyed.
Blaming the ‘damned hormones’ once again, Alex closed his eyes and went back to cultivation. Since he foresaw the possibility of such outcome, he already thought of a way to ‘fix’ it. He picked the thickest soul thread and quickly reached the previous, the eight life.
It was a short, uneventful one and more importantly – he was a boy in it. All of that allowed him to complete the merge much faster than during the first try. Strangely enough the amount of soul particles he gained was not much less than the first time, but he already expected this bonus and quickly added them to his soul brand.
As it turned out ‘quickly’ was not the proper term to use. When he stepped out the pavilion, Alex saw Lou Chen sitting at the lake and the old man seemed to be aged quite a bit.
Sensing Alex behind him, Lou Chen said without turning back, “Well, at least this time you made some progress.”
“Oh? You can tell without looking?” Alex asked sitting next to the him.
“Hahaha! No!” Lou Chen laughed back, “It just would be weird if after spending over a decade in there you would not have any gains, even with your lackluster talent. Although, now that I look at you, you seem to have changed. Did you finally manage your first soul merge?”
“Lackluster, huh?” Alex sighed and shook his head.
During several lives he had come to this realization – his brother Bill, Tango, Nabia and now Muchen – they all were naturally gifted individuals and even at times when he could stand shoulder to shoulder with them, it was only because of the previous experience and knowledge he carried along after reincarnation. Alex was not envious of them – he knew people were different, but for some reason he felt pissed.
“F*ck!” Alex loudly cursed realizing the second soul merge brought along a side effect as well.
With how interesting the current life was, he forgot the almost permanent foul mood he was in during the previous one. And now, after the soul merge, those emotions either resurfaced or spawned anew.
Seeing Lou Chen’s questioning gaze, Alex awkwardly scratched his head and said, “Old man, would you like to go for a walk? I want to pick up the order I left at Wang Hao’s place last time we were there and then take a stroll around that mountain range.”
“The needles? Wang Hao brought them over long time ago. Luckily his craftsmanship is impeccable and they didn’t get rusty.” Lou Chen said and passed over a fist sized box, “What exactly you need these for?”
“I’ll show you.” Alex mysteriously smiled, “But first – let’s go for a walk!”
Since in this world mind cultivation was not particularly developed already before the mind cultivators were eradicated, people didn’t know how to create soul brands, to not speak about the brands on items. Alex did not intend to shy off to use this knowledge and not only that – he intended to fuse it with what he learned while working for Gael in Hallancia kingdom thus upgrading the tactics emperor Cirius used against him.
The weather was sunny and the stroll around the mountain range was quite pleasant, but to Alex’s disappointment the flora was not very diverse around here. He didn’t expect to find tons of poisonous plants, but at least the most common ones like purple nightshade or oleander. Alex really didn’t want to extract poison from marine life since it was too difficult to get rid of the characteristic smell – back then it was Gael’s biggest headache and he spent long months trying to solve it, and gave up in the end anyway.
Fortunately, before Alex got discouraged, they came across a meadow covered in aconites in full bloom.
Lou Chen watched Alex gather the purple flowers in confusion and, when he finally couldn’t hold it in, asked, “Was the split soul you merged with a female?”
“Ye, but that is not important.” Alex said ignoring the sarcasm, “Now we’ll have a chance against the sect master.”
“Are you going to smack him with a flower bouquet and hope he’ll fall over?” Lou Chen asked.
“Funny, old man!” Alex grinned back, “Be patient, I’ll show you when we get back.”
After Alex gathered enough, they continued to walk up the mountains until the whole valley was below their feet. While the view was breathtaking Alex was not bothered with it.
“So it is the snake formation.” He said observing the layout of the core sect.
Atypical was for the formation to end at the foot of a mountain. Usually it had two exits – the snake’s head and tail, but in this case the head was a dead end.
“That’s the Immortal Gate right there.” Lou Chen pointed at the mountain and said, “According to our sect master deep within that mountain is the gate to Immortal realm and he guides the chosen, most talented disciples to it.”
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“It might look really safe and advantageous from his position, but, in fact, there is a serious defensive downside.” Alex said and, noticing Lou Chen’s questioning gaze, continued with a wide grin, “The bastard is trapped down there!”
“I never thought of it that way.” Lou Chen said.“Let’s hope he didn’t either.” Alex patted his shoulder, “There is a chance, old man! Let’s go – I need to prepare something. Afterwards we can think of a plan.”
Since Lou Chen didn’t have any alchemy equipment, on the way down Alex picked up a rock and asked the old man to carve it in to something that resembled mortar. While Alex himself after the soul merges reached the level of a Qi master, it was simply convenient to use Lou Chen’s brute strength. With pestle, of course, it was easier and he crafted it himself and the last part that he needed to successfully refine the poison was a furnace.
There were not that many options lying around, therefore Alex didn’t bother much and confiscated one of Lou Chen’s cooking pots. With words ‘Go, catch some fish. I’ll be back in a bit.’ he went to the pavilion and sat down in the middle of the formation.
The first part was the most difficult. Alex had created few brands in objects while testing out different techniques in the Academy of saints, but none were so small as needles. In addition, his soul brand currently was so huge if compared to what it was back then, it took him some time to figure out a smaller symbolic version of it that could be used on his new weaponry.
Few hours later, after a bit of experimentation, the first branded needle floated in front of Alex. He pondered a bit why the emperor used steel bolts that were much larger and more inconvenient, but probably it had something to do with their potential of armor penetration.
Branding the rest of the needles took much longer than Alex anticipated. The first ten he quickly branded within an hour, but the process was so taxing he worked on the last one almost as long. He was totally spent when the brands on the whole hundred were completed, but it was at most half of what he needed to do.
Still, he played around with the needles, letting them float around him in batches, but soon realized that he seriously underestimated the Qi consumption this exercise had.
After performing few simple breathing exercises to recover Qi, Alex turned to the part of the plan specifics of which he had long forgotten – the alchemy. Exactly this was the reason for him to soul merge with the sixth incarnation. While he remembered the general principles of poison refinement, because of the importance of the task he didn’t want to allow himself to make any mistakes.
Due of the primitive equipment, it took Alex several tries to achieve the result he wanted, but after a couple of days of struggle there was a thick, black substance at the bottom of the pot, maybe amounting to a quarter of a cup. But it was more than enough.
He soaked the hundred branded needles in the poisonous substance while controlling the process with Qi and stopped only when after half a day there was no poison left in the pot. During the process needles gained a dark greenish luster, but more importantly – they gained ability to disrupt the Qi flow of a practitioner and with the right dosage even paralyze them.
Since he was already in the pavilion, Alex considered to quickly soul merge with one of his other lives, but in the end decided against it – he said to Lou Chen he’ll be back out ‘in a bit’, but if the merge took another two-three years it wouldn’t be quickly at all.
When Alex came out, to his surprise the lakeside was completely empty. Lou Chen’s fishing rod lie in the grass with the old man nowhere in sight. At first Alex didn’t think much of it and waited while catching dinner, but, when Lou Chen didn’t show up till late night, he began to have a bad premonition. The refinement of the poisonous needles definitely didn’t take longer than few days, Alex was certain of it – the process was completely different compared to when he lost himself in cultivation.
When the next morning the old man was still absent, Alex went over to Wang Hao’s place in hopes the two old men were having a drink together, but the moment he saw the grand elder’s downcast expression, he knew Lou Chen did something stupid.
“He told me to pass a message to you.” Wang Hao said when Alex approached him, “Since the grand elder’s position is hereditary, from now on you’ll become one. I tried to persuade him to not go there, but he said he could not wait another decade – his power was beginning to deteriorate.”
“F*cking idiot!” Alex cursed, “How stupid an old man can be? I told him to wait a bit! Did I have to be more clear I was not going to soul merge?”
Wang Hao was taken aback by a disciple showing such attitude towards his master, but after a monent took it as a form of grief.
He said, “Lou Chen came over two days ago to discuss something, but after hearing Muchen was … well … few months ago, seeing his progress, the sect master rushed to promote him to an immortal candidate. My disciples even had a huge celebration then … sigh … silly gooses … anyway, hearing the sect master called Muchen to the Immortal mountain, Lou Chen rushed over to … sigh … I don’t know what he could’ve done.”
“That f*cking idiot!” Alex repeated himself.
The success of his plan pretty much depended on Lou Chen, but if he went alone to confront the sect master two days ago, Alex had no way of saving the old man or himself.
“Why in the world would he do such thing?!” Alex felt annoyed and angry at the same time.
“Sigh … it might have been my fault.” Wang Hao said, “Some years ago, while you were cultivating, I told him the secret of you and Muchen being brothers. Don’t look at me like that – Muchen told me. I guess the old lump went alone being afraid you might do something stupid.”
“Doing something stupid while being afraid someone else would do something similar.” Alex sarcastically laughed.
The fact that Muchen thought of him like a brother felt weird, but the old man not being capable of judging Alex’s character after all the time they spent together was even weirder.
“The grand elder’s position is hereditary so … I believe the sect master will soon come out with an announcement.” Wang Hao said with a sigh, “Of course, with you being so young, you’ll be moved to the last position, but at least you’ll have plenty of time to … well … plan and train. Maybe Lou Chen’s hopes won’t die along with him. Just remember – there are things you can’t say out loud – not in the core sect, not anywhere else in the world.”
Alex stared back at the elder in disbelief. Why in the world was he telling him all this stuff? When did he actually agree to become grand elder? And why the hell didn’t Wang Hao go with Lou Chen? Wasn’t Muchen his disciple? Or were the grand elders fine with raising disciples like a livestock for the sect master to feed on?
‘Wait!’ Alex suddenly realized something, ‘The old man! He was also a monster! There was no way the sect master could squish him as a bug! In that case ...’
He didn’t even finished his own thought when he vanished from the spot he was standing. Wang Hao could only sigh again and shake his head in disappointment thinking something along the lines ‘so similar to his own master’, but Alex couldn’t care less. If his assumption was correct – there was a chance!