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In response to Chen Yu’s suggestion, Zhang Long could only shake his head.

“It’s said that the universe is three thousand celestial cycles old,” Zhang Long said. “Each celestial cycle lasts for ten great ages - and each great age lasts for ten thousand eras. Each era lasts for as long as the longest lived person in that era lived for. With that said, in the entire history of the universe that strategy has never worked, and even if the universe lasted for another three hundred thousand celestial cycles, I don’t think that strategy would even work once!”

“You genuinely would have better luck,” Yin Tiang said, “walking up to a girl and saying, ‘I think I crapped my pants, can I slide into yours?’”

“Yeah well,” Chen Yu said, “a guy can dream, can’t he?”

“And as for arrogant young masters,” Yin Tiang said. “We have the ‘arrogant young master at home’ right here - our very own Chen Yu!” He continued with his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Did you know that his father is one hundred and ninety-fifth in line to inherit the throne? That means that all that needs to happen is for one hundred and ninety-four of his relatives to die all at once, and then Chen Yu will be the next heir to the throne! Well, after his other three brothers, that is!” Yin Tiang then chuckled.

“Well, in case that does happen,” Chen Yu said, glaring at Yin Tiang, “Emperors have a habit of keeping eunuchs in high positions, why don’t you start right now by castrating yourself, and I’ll consider adding you to my council in the future?”

“Uh…” Tang Ze said, turning to look at Zhang Long, who shook his head and gave him a ‘those two are always like this’ kind of look.

“But, one hundred and ninety-fifth?” Tang Ze asked. He knew that the emperors kept huge harems, but to not only have so many children, but keep track of who was to inherit up to that big of a number - it was actually quite impressive in a way!

“Well, you might not know this,” Zhang Long said, realizing that Tang Ze hadn’t fully understood what it was that Chen Yu and Yin Tiang were fighting about. “But, the emperor has far more relatives than just that - probably more than you can even imagine. Most of them aren’t in line to inherit at all because of one reason or the other - but in all our history, the maximum degree of separation that anyone has actually inherited the throne was the fourth in line, and that was over twenty thousand years ago. Anyone beyond number ten has virtually no real chance of inheriting, and anyone beyond a hundred is just there for record-keeping purposes.”

“Indeed,” Yin Tiang said, also catching on that Tang Ze might’ve actually thought he was being serious earlier. “Not to mention if someone in front of him in line dies, they might be replaced by someone else before you can move up. The only way for his father to inherit would be for the Imperial Family and everyone in front of him in the line of succession to die in one fell swoop.”

Resources were great in this world, but not limitless. A family like Chen Yu’s, while technically in the line of succession, basically got next to nothing in terms of resources given how far removed they were from the throne.

They were worse off than most noble families in some ways, leaving Chen Yu a ‘young master’ in only name.

“Careful now,” Chen Yu said, his face more serious than before and he voice had lost its jovial tone. “There are eyes and ears everywhere - even while joking, you shouldn’t speak of the Imperial Family’s demise. That could be called treason, and before you know it, all of our heads are on the chopping block.”

“That’s right,” Zhang Long said, yawning. “Better to just take a nap for now.”

While the others napped, Tang Ze couldn’t fall asleep and instead focused on the one thing that he felt he could improve about himself - his talent in other words.

After some experimenting, he had learned a few intricacies of how it worked.

First off, regarding the fact that the closer his costume was to the original, the closer his powers would also be to the original.

For one, it did not work with religious figures or the such - he would’ve loved to be omnipotent, whatever a fraction of omnipotence would be, but it turned out that was a limit it could not cross.

Secondly, it was only the costume that mattered, he didn’t need to pretend to be like the character.

Thirdly, despite making him more powerful, whatever costume he happened to make was just that - a costume made up of whatever it was made of. This could be an issue regarding durability in the future. He had made a somewhat rough getup for a character he knew about whose power was super speed and who could move many times faster than light at his peak power. The issue was that even when he moved at a fraction of that speed, the air friction would cause what he was wearing to wear down - and the moment that his costume was damaged, the amount it represented the character decreased, and so on until he could not really run much faster than a normal person.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The outfit he had used to pass the entrance test, despite being used only for a few minutes, had minute tears in it from the strain that he had put on it and needed to be repaired. With his costumes, he needed to take care that they didn’t rip apart in the middle of battle. That was going to be hard with some of them though given the nature of their powers. It would be very hard to use any character with, say, pyromancer-like abilities for this reason.

Because while getting hit by fire, or acid, or something else that might not harm him because of his powers still meant that part of his costume could dissolve though, weakening him. Also, he couldn’t rip his shirt off in the middle of combat no matter how cool that might seem later on when he finally got around to working out and getting a six pack.

Fourthly, it wasn’t just appearance, what the costume was made of did matter if it was something that clearly was not made of that material. For example, for a character wearing leather boots, he could make socks that resembled them, but the fact that they would be made of cotton or something of the like meant that its resemblance to the original was less, meaning it would not make him as strong.

Fifth, he had to actually intend to cosplay a character for it to work. If you think about it, he was almost constantly cosplaying something or someone even if it was just 0.0000000001% resemblance to the character, but he had to intend to be doing it - or it wouldn’t count.

Sixth, he couldn’t mix-and-match different outfits to get a piece of multiple character’s powers simultaneously, he could only do one at a time.

Seventh, the outfit had to actually be visible for it to work. Tang Ze was secretly wearing a costume underneath his sect uniform, but he couldn’t get access to any of its abilities. It was only the fact that he could still wear his cape was what gave him what little powers he had right now.

It didn’t matter if no one could see it - say if it was pitch-black in darkness it would still work, but it had to be visible and not covered by something else like a cloak or coat.

Now, coming to the second part of his ability, that was naturally what Tang Ze was more interested in.

The power to keep these abilities permanent and add them to his repertoire even when he wasn’t dressed up - that was something that he could mix-and-match to ultimately become undefeatable.

If only it didn’t take so long!

The closer his costume was to the actual thing, the faster that he could gain those abilities permanently it seemed, up to the maximum that the costume allowed for.

Sadly, ‘faster’ was a relative term. Even when considering his full current set, by his approximation, it would take him about two hundred years to fully acclimate to its powers.

Now, its powers were great - no doubt about that. Even if he could only be half as strong as the character in question, it would likely place him around the Hinayana realm or higher in terms of the raw strength it would give him.

The weakest Golden Core cultivator was about sixty times as strong as an ordinary human. That number jumped to three thousand at the Nascent Soul stage.

An Eternal Soul cultivator could approach the strength of over a million times that of a normal person, while a Hinayana realm cultivator could nearly approach the strength of a billion. The Mahayana realm, if it even existed, was over a trillion times one’s base strength. Tang Ze had a bit of difficulty believing those numbers at first, but that was just the effect of compounding on top of bigger and bigger numbers cumulatively. Compounded numbers have a way of getting out of hand rather quickly.

That was still relatively about what his costume could provide, and to gain just the physical strength of even a Hinayana realm cultivator in two hundred years was an excellent opportunity that many cultivators would die for.

Still, two hundred years! A normal human lifespan would not last that long, so his only real way out was to extend his lifespan somehow. He would need to cultivate for that, something he was apparently quite bad at given that he was at the Zeroth Realm right now.

No, it wouldn’t be right to say that he was necessarily bad at it, rather, he was behind by several years as he didn’t belong to this world, and had to literally start at zero.

Maybe there was a way to speed up the process of his talent to make it take less time than two hundred years? That was why resources were so important for cultivation in the first place, after all.

It was unfortunate he couldn’t find anything in the meantime to speed up breaking through the Zeroth Realm, but in the future he would be able to use resources like the rest of his squad could.

He tried to sit down on a rock and start meditating - though he didn’t get very far and didn’t think that he had accomplished much as noon came and the team reported that they had finished the job.

That was not the only job they were given - they were given various other tasks by the sect, either to do as a group, or more rarely - alone. Most of these were very mundane tasks like gathering, throwing out waste, or cleaning. As it turns out, the majority of their time was spent tied up in these tasks.

Two things did happen in the next week that could potentially help Tang Ze when it came to his cultivation, however.

One was that Chen Yu slipped him a bottle of some clear liquid one day. “I got this from my family - it’s a bottle of baby oil.”

“How many babies did you have to kill to make that?” Yin Tiang asked. While he was working on some kind of concoction, he had evidently been overhearing what they were saying.

Yin Tiang was joking - but Tang Ye knew even with his limited experience in this world that if killing babies could raise your cultivation by even zero point one percent, even the most righteous sects would start researching the most efficient ways to slaughter babies.

Chen Yu ignored the rather bad joke and added, “This is supposed to be good for babies - in that it has small amount of Qi in it and is supposed to seep into one’s body through the skin. It’s very mild of course, so even babies can wear it without it causing any nasty side effects - maybe if you put it on every night it’ll help with your breakthrough to the first minor realm of Qi Condensation?”

“Maybe?” Tang Ze asked, taking the bottle. “You’re not sure if it works?”

Chen Yu shrugged. “I mean, if you ask me - it’s probably just a marketing ploy to sell it at five times the normal price, which is why my mother used to use it. Didn’t really help me that much though, as you can see.” Chen Yu and Yin Taing were both at the fourth minor realm of Qi Condensation, while Zhang Long had only recently broken to the sixth minor realm of Qi Condensation. There was only a twenty-one percent difference when it came to two minor realms at Qi Condensation, though as this effect was cumulative, the absolute difference was higher when one went to higher minor realms.