“The path of the Imperium?” Feng Zhiming thought to himself, the term seemed familiar but he just couldn’t put his finger on it.
As he was about to continue reading, he was interrupted.
“What’s wrong with you?” A sunny voice came from beside Feng Zhiming.
Dolly had appeared to take her seat beside him on the crows nest.
Feng Zhiming was slightly annoyed, he disliked being interrupted in the middle of a good book.
“What’s wrong with me?” Feng Zhiming asked, a confused expression plastered on his face.
Dolly nodded.
“Yes, what is wrong with you? You’ve been sitting here for days just talking to yourself and muttering about this and that.”
Feng Zhiming was beyond baffled.
“I-”
“You have to be the strangest cultivator I’ve ever seen, you sit here and do nothing all day when your three companions are always trying to improve.”
Dolly was an Enigma to Feng Zhiming.
Why was she concerned about him? Anissa being concerned made sense as she grew attached to him, the witch and the knight being concerned made sense they needed the compass.
But Dolly, she was concerned for reasons Feng Zhiming couldn’t pinpoint.
“Is it wrong to do nothing?”
Feng Zhiming played along for now, all he could do was have his reasoning go circular so he decided to take a break.
Dolly was stunned by the question, in the many ways she imagined this interaction going, this was not one of them.
“You’re good at doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“Deflecting questions.”
Now it was Feng Zhiming’s turn to be surprised, his lips curled up into a smile.
“This girl isn’t as air headed as I initially assumed.” he thought to himself as his grip on the chair loosened.
“Didn’t you deflect my question about not doing anything being worse than doing something?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t want to think about questions with no answers.”
“Don’t sully the importance of a question, by saying it has no answer.”
Dolly’s confusion only grew.
“The importance of a question?” she replied slowly, just to confirm if she heard it correctly.
Feng Zhiming moved his face closer to hers.
“Captain Dolly. There exists no question for which there is no answer. For there to be a conclusion you seek through a question, a deliberation on that conclusion must exist, all questions have an answer even if that answer is the expression of a lack of an answer.”
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Dolly halted all movement, she even stopped breathing for a moment.
Feng Zhiming realized that he had gone overboard with his philosophical lecture and pulled back.
“Forget it.” he said to her as he sighed.
“Wait, so if I ask you, what does it mean to be human, do you have an answer for even that?” Dolly asked with a curious expression on her face.
“What do you think it means to be human?” Feng Zhiming used his go to tactic, with these types of questions the only way to satisfy the other party was to understand their point of view first.
“I’m not sure, my father taught me that to be human one must be obedient to the rules.”
Feng Zhiming raised his eyebrows, this father of her sure seemed more like a warden rather than a parent, but then again who was Feng Zhiming to judge, he didn’t have parents to speak of.
“That may be your father’s moral definition of a human or humanity, there are different definitions such as biological and philosophical definitions of humanity. I may refer to others as human in a biological context but morally they are not.”
Dolly nodded before speaking.
“So then, what is your definition of human?”
Feng Zhiming looked her dead in the face and spoke without a hint of hesitation in his voice.
“My metric is simple, to be human is to be me.”
Dolly just as quickly realized she had been taken for a wild goose chase, she quickly stood up and moved to block Feng Zhiming’s view of the desert.
“I’ve had it with your jokes, forget all that, just tell me. Why aren’t you cultivating and just sitting here, don’t you want to get stronger?”
Feng Zhiming looked at her in a way that he would look at a cute animal, like a rabbit, he savoured moments like these.
For some reason after all he had been through recently the people around him started to seem less threatening.
Someone who had felt the pressure of things he could not utter, would obviously feel less endangered by the presence of mere humans.
“Have you considered that there are things more important than cultivation, things more important than strength?”
Feng Zhiming gave in, he wasn’t sure why, maybe it was her inquisitive nature that made him feel nostalgic.
“More important than cultivation… I don’t believe it.” Dolly thought about the statement carefully.
Her expression quickly changed into a serious one and she raised one of her hands in the air.
Feng Zhiming felt something like an invisible thread brush against his body, gently resting on his neck.
“My father taught me that cultivation is the most important, if you’re powerful it's the best, why would he lie to me?” her tone had shifted from her regular cheery demeanour into one that exuded slight hesitation, like a child who was told her imaginary friend didn’t exist.
The thread began to press against Feng Zhiming’s neck threatening to sink deeper, Although he wouldn’t die from a decapitation he would be helpless to protect his Ethereal Core.
“So now that I hold your life in my hands, do you not think cultivation is the most important?”
Feng Zhiming was silent for a moment, this belief of cultivation being the be all end all wasn’t one he held in the first place.
“No it is not, the truly most important thing stands before me.” He pointed at her as he spoke.
“It is not that you cannot kill me with your superior cultivation, rather you will not kill me because of who you are, you are not a killer by nature.”
Feng Zhiming was a believer of knowledge superseding cultivation, recent events had only served to bolster that belief.
After all if he knew about the deception of the scholar of black and his Lord, how could he ever let them trick him.
“No you li-”
As she was speaking the ship suddenly shook as it collided with something, the crash had made her lose all balance.
She almost fell over but Feng Zhiming stood up and caught her.
She quickly pushed herself out of his hands, almost too quickly, as if she did not want to be touched.
From the bow of the ship a Circular column with fangs lining its long and a fluid body rose from the sand.
It had one eye at the forefront of its body, stretching to cover its circumference, wrapped around the column of flesh like a stripe.
The top of its head opened to reveal a gaping mouth with layered teeth dyed red by the blood of its previous victims.
Feng Zhiming narrowed his eyes as the creature came into view, it was unlike any he had seen before,
“Actualized stage of Spiritual awakening.” Dolly spoke as she straightened her posture.