After explaining to Song Song the man in the book and the weird way he changed expressions throughout the book, she nodded thoughtfully. It wasn't like a moving picture, but it was still cool in its own way.

"It must be an extra security measure I never activated," Song Song shrugged.

"You're probably right," I nodded. "The guy must have been sleeping for a while. Either that or he was alone all that time... No wonder he talked so much."

Due to his age, the man in the book hadn't considered what might not be common knowledge, and he spoke about things that were way above my level.

I also learned about Otherworldly Devils and more people like me. It was nice, but it hadn't really changed anything. There was no significant advantage an Otherworldly Devil had against the people of this world. It was nothing close to the advantage actually talented people had.

After some thought, I took the books out of my storage ring and plopped them on the dry wooden porch.

Anyway, it was time to learn some new arrays. But first, I needed to arrange the books in the order I should read them.

As I began arranging them, Song Song watched me from the sidelines with curious eyes, her chin resting on her palm.

"There is a good chance my master has decided to jump ship," Song Song suddenly said.

I looked up from the books and turned toward her. "What makes you think that?"

Our gazes met, and despite discussing betrayal of the highest order, we were both calm. There was a good chance I was the source of these changes where Song Song's teacher would abandon her. Of course, Song Song's actions definitely added to her teacher's decision. But my instructions and decapitating that cousin of hers cost Song Song most of her supporters. Very few knew the context of that situation, and even those who did didn't care.

"I don't know. She just seemed like she had already given up. No matter how hard you try, a tool that doesn't do what it's made for is useless. Even if it's a good tool," she said.

"They can't replace you that easily," I said.

"True," Song Song nodded. "You know, she raised me. That granny was the closest thing I had to a mother after my own mother was killed."

I nodded and went back to organizing the books, giving her the chance to talk. There was nothing I could say to reassure her of something like that. The best I could do was lend her an ear and listen to her problems.

"The reason I didn't even listen to that granny that much when it didn't involve cultivation was because she treated me like a younger version of herself," Song Song chuckled. "I bet she got fooled by a young man and broke that technique when she was younger. She does give off that vibe that she was dumb when she was younger."

By "that technique," Song Song meant the technique that increased cultivation speed as long as a woman was a virgin.

Though I was here to listen, she just put an image of the granny doing the nasty in my head. All wrinkly and all that. But if I told Song Song to stop, that would be the last thing she would do since she liked making me uncomfortable when it came to this.

“Perhaps she wanted children?” I offered a different perspective.

To be honest, the thought of the granny doing the deed really disrupted my thoughts about studying arrays. I didn’t know much about the situation, but I didn’t want to talk about an old granny’s sex life, so I tried to change the subject.

Thankfully, Song Song didn’t notice how uncomfortable I was and shrugged. “That still doesn’t improve my opinion of her.”

“Why?” This time, I was genuinely curious.

“People have children to leave something behind after they die, but a cultivator chases immortality. What use are children? Especially ones that would lower your cultivation potential,” Song Song stated.

She had an interesting way of looking at things. Though that somehow suited her. I couldn’t see Song Song being the loving mother type. She would probably be the tough-love kind of mother.

Song Song would do something like put her kids in a jungle and tell them to survive. It was worrying that while I was trying to think of something extreme and funny she would do, that actually seemed very likely.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

She could probably tell we didn’t see the kid thing the same way. But it would be useless to try and change her view on things. Song Song clearly made up her mind about this.

After that thought, I returned to reading the array books in the brisk warmth. Song Song also began cultivating.

These books were explained terribly, just like the ones in the Outer Sect Library. But I was used to this by now and could get the information I wanted, dismissing the fake life stories of the array’s creators in these parts.

As the writers of their own biographies in these books, even a demonic technique developer would make themselves look like the tragic hero.

…

Two days passed, and unlike what I expected, living in the same house as Song Song was quite comfortable. We ate breakfast together with the food the servants left at the front door. Then, she would cultivate most of the day while I read the books on arrays. By evening, I would also join her in cultivating until my spiritual roots strained after a handful of hours.

It was just another day of reading on the wooden porch, with Song Song cultivating next to the pond and the warm winter sun comfortably warming up the yard.

But I had finally learned a couple of new things from the books in the Song Library. As expected of a library that even had something about Otherworldly Devils, these books had some amazing things. Not just new arrays but new ways of thinking and approaching arrays.

I stood up, dusted off my clothes, and walked into the yard a bit away from the porch.

I released some Qi, and now manipulating Qi felt as easy as moving my fingers. A translucent square barrier sprung up. With a thought, I formed a jade soldier next to me. He walked into the array. I had him walk until he was in the middle of the array.

Who would have thought that the math I learned in school would be useful someday?

In my mind, I visualized an X and Y axis forming a cross horizontal with the ground. I calculated all the possible 2D positions within the barrier. I programmed the jade soldier so that if someone attacked it from the Y axis, it would dodge back toward the negative part of the Y axis and vice versa.

In the future, I planned to add another value called Z, representing where the X and Y lines met, to account for 3D movement.

I walked into the barrier easily since the array had no function to stop anyone from entering. Once inside, I crouched down and charged at the jade warrior.

This time, I gave no mental orders and was about to attack the jade soldier from the back. But it didn't matter since the jade soldier's eyes were merely for decoration.

When I got close enough, it still didn't move. Only when my punch landed on its head, it took a step away from me.

Ah, right, it wasn't designed to interpret an impending attack. I had programmed it to back off only after it was attacked, and it wouldn't register the attack until it happened. That was a bug I needed to fix.

This was like coding on a computer—hard and tedious work, but once done, I wouldn't have to do it every time. Instead, when I used the technique, it would be just like copy-pasting the code.

"Now I just need to think of a name," I murmured.

A simple name like the Jade Controlling Array or the Jade Soldier Array could work. But then I recalled the pain I had suffered reading through long technique names. Suffering like that builds character.

"Thousand Soldier Greenbook Jade Controlling Array!" I smiled, thinking of the poor soul who would curse my notes on this array in the future.

Was this what people who invented unpaid overtime or homework felt like?

Anyway, there were other arrays to test, and I couldn't stand around gloating all day. With just a thought, the barrier and jade soldiers crumbled into wisps of Qi and disappeared.

Many arrays I had read about in the past few days came to the forefront of my mind. I was concentrating on the elemental arrays that could do damage. I really wanted one of those big explosion arrays. That was something I hadn't touched yet.

There were many elemental arrays to choose from, but I had already made my choice. Fire was far too volatile and commonly practiced early on, even though the Blazing Sun Sect had an abundance of such arrays. Also, these arrays were too straightforward, boring, and consumed too much Qi.

Boring was the keyword here. Even if there were things I wanted to try with fire arrays, there was a good chance I could blow this whole place up and end up horribly scarred at best.

But there was another array that was more Qi efficient and just as strong. Although there weren't many of those kinds of arrays in the Blazing Sun Sect.

A translucent, whitish square barrier appeared, and dark clouds formed at the top. There was a flash in the dark clouds, and rumbling thunder rang out.

Not long after, lightning began falling like rain within the array, leaving my ears ringing.

“Fuck, why does it have to be so loud?” I grumbled, reluctantly bringing the barrier down.

As I helped my ringing ears settle, the smell of scorched green grass where the lightning had landed wafted up my nose. It wasn’t a pleasant smell.

“Can you be a bit quieter? Some of us are trying to cultivate here,” Song Song said.

“I didn’t know it was going to be so loud. Damn, my ears are still ringing,” I grumbled.

“It was a lightning array; of course it was going to be loud. Sometimes, I really think you were dropped on your head as a child,” Song Song snidely remarked.

“Insults get stale if you use them twice. You have to be original; that’s how they hurt the most,” I replied.

What she said was only technically true. Not the part about me being dropped on my head as a child, but the fact that this array wasn’t actually shooting lightning. It was just having Qi turn into and imitate lightning. That was a very different thing, and in the books, it even said that the lightning shot around randomly within the constraints of the barrier.

On Earth, there was a saying that lightning didn’t strike twice in the same place. But that wasn’t remotely true. Lightning often struck the same place repeatedly, even during the same storm. Modern cities even had these things called lightning rods whose function was to attract lightning so it wouldn’t hit something important.

Now I just had to think about how to make a lightning rod...

“Hey, Song Song, want to try and see if you can handle this lightning array I’m planning to modify?” I asked her before she could return to her cultivation.

She should be able to handle the damage and any accident. I needed a testing dummy for this technique.

Also, I knew Song Song was bored enough to give this a try.