After we were done setting up the chat server, we decided to head towards the Marketplace, since we were already out and about. I assumed that at least someone from the Apothecary Guild would know where we could find some of these Pill-Forge “add-ons” that Timmy was talking about. I assumed that there existed an entire larger list of add-ons that could become attached to the main cauldron, each with a different function. Indeed, once we got to the Apothecary Guild we found out that they indeed had the capacity to order or construct some of these add-ons, but the problem was that they all had to be custom-fitted for the user’s cauldron. There were many add-ons on the list, from stuff like decanters, alembics, vaporizers, separators, retorts, crucibles, athanors, oxygen-free calcinators and all sorts of other crazy looking contraptions that you could place inside, attach alongside the walls of the main cauldron, on top of the lid or even below the bottom for better control or output. Some of these even looked like actual chemistry tools instead of Alchemical ones, so I think that the System's main intention was to make the user FEEL like they were actually doing chemistry, instead of the magical mumbo jumbo that they were actually performing.
Since we were already inside the Apothecary Guild and Fung was paying for all the shit anyway, I decided to purchase a few [Superior] quality mortars and pestles that were aimed at level 50+ users.
Fung began to wonder why we were getting level 50 stuff, since he knew that he wouldn't be able to use them properly, but I told him not to worry about it and that I had a method for bypassing that “small” issue by sharing my module with him.
After we bought the mortars and pestles, the guys from the Apothecary Guild said that they could not help us anymore for the time, but that we should also head to the forges and check with the Master Smith over there as well, since he was one of the few guys with the skills high enough to create the weird items that we were looking for.
As both of us began to head towards the forges, I still remained curious about why “level requirements” were a “thing” in the first place, and Fung gladly obliged to inform me about the details.
From what Fungus told me, level requirements for items in this world were kind of weird in the way they prevented lower-level people from using the high level stuff. It is not that you couldn't actually USE the items if you really wanted to. Anybody could still pick up a level 50 sword or a level 50 bow and swing it around or shoot it, but rather the problem was that one would begin to suffer certain symptoms after using it for a while, and many of the after-effects were quite debilitating. A person could damage oneself permanently if they were not careful, so most people just tended to pay heed to the level-requirement warnings and kept away from items that were considered to be out of their reach by the System.
There had actually been a few rare instances during history when the battle between the “Big Bad” and the “Main Hero” had ended up in a draw, but then one of the smaller insignificant “red shirt” low level soldiers had picked up the Hero’s level 50+ Weapon and had finished off the “Big Bad Boss” instead of the fainted Hero, by using the weapon for the “last hit”.
Of course, Fung then continued to regale me with his item “lore”, and told me that there was also another type of item which was much more drastic when it came down to restrictions, and that was the “soul-bound” type of item. Soul-bound items were usually a tier above legendary, usually possessed a “consciousness” of their own, could not be stolen because they would literally teleport back to their soul-bound users, and absolutely refused to work with anybody else except for their Masters. These fucking items would actively attempt to kill you if you ever tried to wield them without their Master’s approval by electrocuting, poisoning, incinerating or disintegrating you on the spot as soon as you touched them. Of course, being semi-conscious gear, they were able to distinguish between friend or foe, and would not attack, for example, the Master’s Squire which was attempting to clean the blood from all of the weapons and the armours after combat. Soulbound items could still be manipulated by individuals designated as “friendly” by the Master, but could never be used for their “main” intended purpose by anybody else except for their own Master.
I guess that this was the System’s way of preventing what I assumed were “pay-to-win” items from winding up in the hands of the commoners or the “regular type” adventurer parties.
Also, because they were soul-bound items, when their Masters died, the items also vanished from the world as well, to only become found again many years later as “unclaimed items” waiting for the “Destined Hero” to come and pluck them away from their fucking-difficult-to-reach location, like that very well-known Sword in the Stone.
Once we got to the forges, we ran into one of the boys that had installed my stove a while back ago, the one that had left the “call card” and had urged us to visit the forges if we ever needed any sort of items smithed.
Funnily enough, I found out that the boy’s name was Bang, and I found it rather fitting for someone who bashed metal all day long. He seemed rather glad to see us, and immediately took us to see his “boss”, which was the Forge Master of the entire Sect himself. The Forge Master was quite a stocky-short but wide-and-strong little fellow, betraying some of the Dwarven ancestry that must have been mixed in his blood, and was quite a jolly old dude that did not mind at all taking the time to listen to our requests.
Unfortunately, after we described what we wanted, he similarly told us the same thing that the apothecaries had already said, which was that we first had to bring our cauldron to his place for inspection before he could begin work, since he needed to measure it first so that he could make sure that the parts would fit right in without any problems, once they were ready.
I should have seen that coming.
Of course that there were no “uniform” STAS standards when it came to crafting in this world, and each “master” did what they thought was best out of the top of their heads.
Since the only Pill Forge that we had at the moment was that absolutely crappy one that Lingfeng had left with us, we decided that it would be smarter if we were to just wait for Fungus to find a better Pill Forge somewhere amongst his clan’s auction houses. Of course, I also told Fungus to take care when putting in the request, and not retrieve the item for himself, but rather tell the Clan that it was a request from Elder Lingfeng, so it would not become suspicious that we were asking for level 50+ items.
Just as we were heading out of the building, I spotted Jin Tianzen, the Hero of the Flame, sitting cross-legged in “meditation mode” on the rooftop of the forge with a concentrated look on his face.
"Hey Bang, what's he doing up there?"
"You mean Jin? He is refining his fire Qi. Unlike you normal cultivators, us guys with fire-attuned spiritual roots can also cultivate by using the fire Qi from the environment, which makes the proximity of the forges quite a good place to be at if you want to gather fire Qi."
"Then what's with that big-ass book that's lying on his lap? Won't that thing catch fire if he keeps it close enough to the flame of the forges?"
"Oh no, most definitely not, that thing is his fire-spell tome, and is most definitely immune to fire. He cradles it like that because he says it helps him cultivate faster."
I absolutely got a horribly bad vibe coming out from that book. A part of my subconscious was literally screaming at me that something was wrong with that tome.
Upon closer inspection, I realised what was triggering the massive wave of heebie-jeebies inside of my head. On the cover lay the symbol of Solomon’s Signet, alongside with many other runic symbols. That thing was not a spell tome, but rather a Demonic Grimoire! Of course, the locals had no idea about Solomon's Demons, not about the symbol of Solomon Signet that was plastered on the covers, but since I was a transmigrator from Earth and that symbol appeared decently often in many consumable media like games, novels or animes, I had recognized the drawing immediately.
I could bet my non-existent hat that inside that Grimoire was locked one of Solomon's Ancient Demons, and that it was now acting like the “Kind Grandpa” aide for the misinformed little boy and was helping him cultivate faster while revealing many “hidden techniques”, so that the Demon might build itself a perfect Host body for a later-on possession.
I had to find some way to warn the little pipsqueak, but without the Grimoire getting suspicious, and I did not know if he would even believe me in the first place, nor did there seem to be any sudden opportunity for a “private talk” with the little guy, since he always seemed to carry that goddamn book around with him everywhere he went. If the moron kept cultivating with that thing, he would definitely wind up a Demonic Cultivator instead, and might even lose his body to the Demon within the book.
I was actually second guessing myself whether I should even get involved with Jin in the first place, because even if I did somehow manage to get rid of the book, I would still count as being involved into his narrative by the System, and would get entangled with his fate “for life” from thereon.
While I still had some leeway because I was also being considered as a "paid user account" by the System, the other people around me did not have that benefit, so once Fung or Lingfeng would get involved, they would permanently remain glued to the narrative of the Hero of the Flame as well, and I did not want to see that happen.
But for now, that was out of my hands. The only thing I could do at this moment was to just add another “thing to worry about” entry to my ever-increasing list. The demon would not rush to possess Jin until he was “ripe”, which was still far away for now.
Fung then left for his clan’s home to inquire about any available Pill Forges. He came back later in the evening to my house and told me that he had indeed found a suitable 50+ [Rare] Pill Forge for our needs, but that it would take for a few days for it to arrive, which was totally understandable. I was just glad that we had found something, and that Fung was paying for it, since I was still broke as fuck, even with the spirit stone upgrade method that I had just discovered.
Which also reminded me that I should ask Fung for how much money one of these 100% clean-Qi stones could sell for.
"Hey Fungus, I do not want to freak you out or anything, but I have a question about an Item. Just prepare yourself mentally for it." I warned Fung.
"I don’t think anything could surprise me anymore coming from y...WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING? HOW DID YOU GET YOUR HANDS ON SUCH AN ITEM?" Fung was absolutely panicking upon seeing the 100% pure spirit stone I had just produced.
"I made it!"
"You WHAT?"
"I MADE IT! I squeezed a few other spirit stones dry and then moved all of the clean Qi inside of this one."
"Moved? How the fuck in blue blazes did you manage to do that in the first place? How can you “move” the Qi inside a stone? I didn't even know that such a thing was possible! NOBODY DOES!"
"Oh, I know that dear Fungus. You’re all retarded, you don’t have to tell me twice. I used my spirit-roots branch-tentacles to move the Qi."
"The tentawhatshis?"
"Well, you know how your Spirit Roots wind up looking like some sort of a tree when they grow up? Well, I modified mine to behave more like the tentacles of an anemone or an octopus, and I can move them outside of my body to grab or manipulate Qi around me however I please. It makes cultivating “clean” Qi so much easier when you can just grab it by force then drag it in, rather than having to put up with that filtering bullshit like the regular cultivation method tells you to."
Fung was looking like me like I had somehow insulted the cultivation method and knowledge of all of his ancestors, which in hindsight might have actually been true, but was still curious to find out how I was doing it my way.
Since I did not want to dry my mouth off by explaining it twice, I begged Fung to wait for a few more minutes until Lingfeng would show up for dinner, since the scribe had also sort-of made it a daily thing of his to drop by and eat my cooking, so that I might explain my concepts and methods to both of them at the same time.
Until then, I could not help but become curious about what happens when two Spirit Roots collide. I wiggled one of my branch-tentacles out of my navel, then told Fung to lay his head on my lap for an “experiment”.
He still looked somewhat bitter about finding out that his clan’s cultivation method was crap, but he still complied with my request. I tossed my ghostly tentacle towards his spirit root that still was buried inside his head, and I got some outstanding results!
As soon as I touched his roots with my tentacle, Timmy began to yell.
Timmy: Friendly Party Member Spiritual Roots detected, do you wish to Inspect them?
"Fung, can I have a look at your Spirit Roots?"
"Ugh..sure?"
Timmy, show me!
Sure enough, Fung’s Character sheet immediately popped up.
Character Sheet:
Name: (Ming) Tai Fung
Level: 16
Cultivation Stage: Qi Refinement Stage 6
Root Type: Earth 64% Fire 26%
Spiritual Root Growth: 15.123478%
Body Age: 15 years, 5 months, 11 days
Birth Sign: The Brothers
Race: Human
Sex: M
Class: Disciple
Height: 187 Cm.
Weight: 120 Kg.
Main Guild/Sect: Ming Dynasty
⊞Tap here to see more Guilds.
Faction: Merchant Clan Tai
⊞Tap here to see more Factions.
True Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Displayed Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Religion: Buddhist Nonpractitioner.
Current Buffs:
N/A
Current Debuffs:
N/A
Statistics:
Hitpoints: 16000
Hitpoint recovery/sec:0.05
Stamina Points:16500
Stamina recovery/sec: 320
Qi/Mana Points:10525/16000
Qi/Mana recovery/sec: 0
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Body Integrity: 100% ⊞
Spirit Integrity: 100% ⊞
Tap on ⊞ to see stats for each individual body part or organ component.
Tap on ⊞ to see stats for each individual dantian, meridian section or acupoints.
Strength:⊞ 18
Sometimes skips leg day
Constitution:⊞ 16
Skull thick enough to smash rocks
Adroitness:⊞ 16
Fumble but not tumble
Perception:⊞15
At least he isn’t wearing glasses
Intellect:⊞16
Takes a while for him to get it
Charisma:⊞8
Maybe he’s a beautiful soul inside
Luck: 50%
Fortune favors the stupid too!
Tap on ⊞ to expand each category
Ah, Fungus, you poor sob, no wonder Girls don’t like you, your Charisma is total crap!
But overall, I was surprised to see that the System had auto-assigned his Attributes in an even-split way, which would technically make Fung a “jack of all trades” build. Since the Math did not match up perfectly, I assumed that the “extra” points I was seeing in some of the categories had been gained through some other ways, like training hard or getting beaten up constantly.
The second surprise came when Fung began to ask me stuff that I did not expect.
"Hey Trina, why does this screen say that your class is [Low Level Evil Minion Clone] and that you used to belong to a Demonic Sect?"
Shit! Was he also able to see my Character sheet? Was this some sort of “I show you mine, then you show me yours” kind of situation? Damnit. Ok, don’t panic, I can still salvage this!
"Well, remember what I told you about getting rescued by Lingfeng from a Demonic Sect that was experimenting on me? Well, that’s the main reason why my stats and class are weird like that. Did you think that I was lying?"
"Honestly, I was kind of hoping that you were...I have had even worse ways of getting rejected, yours just seemed like a mild version of the previous ones. It looked to me like you were just “letting me off” gently, but I guess I was totally wrong, eh? So then, it’s true that you’re…"
"A guy? Yes, pretty much. I already told you I used to be male. I was even an older guy too, around 35, before I found myself captured and then got experimented on. You have no idea how incredibly confusing it is for me at this moment, being stuck in a young girl’s body. I nowadays can’t help but stare after the butts of dudes as well as the tits of chicks, and it’s really fucking weird, if you know what I mean.
....
A shit, why are my robes getting wet? Fung, are you crying like a little baby again?"
Sure enough, Fung was pissing his eye again. His secondary hopes had now been totally ruined as well, and I could feel his sorrow through the tentacle-connection, which was a really weird empathic-link kind of feeling. I sent back all of my manly bro “pat on the back” feelings that I could muster back through the link, which had seemed to calm him down a little bit.
Spirit Roots clashing felt fucking weird! But I could also see how something like this could be used in an offensive or defensive way if I ever had to face a High Level Cultivator that did not expect to see such a thing from me.
After that, I retracted my tentacle and severed the connection just right before Lingfeng walked in for his daily checkup and food-moochery. After we all had dinner, I resumed my “lessons” with both of them, then I began to describe what I had done with my “branch-tentacles” and even demonstrated “moving” the Qi from inside a few low level spirit stones that Lingfeng had produced for experimentation.
When Lingfeng saw the 100% stone that had resulted from my manipulation, he gave me an astounded but fearful look, similar to the one that Fung had also shown before.
"Ok, seriously, what’s up with you two? Why the long faces?"
"Child, do you even know how fucking revolutionary, not to mention dangerous the technique you are performing is?" Lingfeng berated me.
"This stone alone (he pointed at the 100% crafted one) is now worth at least 100,000 “normal” low level spirit stone at the least, and that is before hitting the auctions. While with the Qi gathered from 100,000 low level spirit stones you would only be able to barely advance your cultivation level by a little bit, with this 100% spirit stone on the other hand, you would be able to easily craft a legendary potion or a legendary item. You're a smart enough girl, so I'm sure you can figure out exactly just how rare these things are. Not to mention that I have never seen or heard of a pure stone that was at 100% clean Qi. Such a thing is absolutely impossible to be found in nature, even if you had cultivators intentionally feeding the Manaxites clean Qi at a continuous rate in the Spirit Springs. If any sect or cultivator were to get their hands on your method for creating such a thing, incredible mayhem would follow. People would be murdering each other left and right, only to get their hands on this secret. Young Master Fung, I must ask you to swear on your Dao thay you will not speak a word of this to anyone outside of this room."
"Of course I won't, I'm not suicidal! I come from a merchant clan, don't you think that I have a general idea about how precious this thing is? I do not feel like getting kidnapped or tortured for such a thing. In all honesty, I am not even sure that her cultivation method can even be reproduced."
"Well, there is only one way to find that out, Fungus! Why don't you try creating one of these branch-tentacles inside of your root as well? Just follow the method I have shown you previously for braiding Qi tentacles, then shove the braid inside one of your spiritual branches."
It took about half an hour for Fungus to get the whole thing done, but by the end of it, he showed an absolutely exhilarated expression on his face, as he had managed to create his first branch-tentacle.
"Hah, look, I can move it around! I can wiggle it! This is so fucking awesome! I can actually manipulate my pure Qi around with this thing!" Cried fungus excitedly. "Ok, now what?"
Ugh...shit! I never thought about that! While my branch tentacles are located near my navel and can easily pop out of my body and grab Qi from the surroundings, Fung's spiritual roots are within his head. He would need some long ass branch-tentacle to reach all the way to the navel, and I am not sure that the branches can even stretch that far. I have not tested the limits for length that a branch-tentacle might achieve as of yet.
I asked Lingfeng if there was any other spot on the entire body that was a “contact point” with nature, just like the navel or the fingers were, only much closer to the head where the spirit roots lay at. I mean, the mouth was probably the first thing that popped up into my head when it came to something that might actually work, since the eyes, the ears, the mouth and the throat all had their own meridian pathways that could be opened, but Lingfeng told me that the best pick for a contact point was the Third Eye chakra, which also had its own meridian pathway.
If Fungus could somehow manage to open his Third Eye chakra, then he would be able to wiggle his branch tentacle out into the world through that “exit” point and do some Qi manipulatin’ of his own.
Lingfeng warned me that opening the Third Eye chakra was usually one of the last steps on the road to cultivation, because you would then be able to “perceive” the entire world in a much better way with your spiritual roots. Even Lingfeng had been stuck at this exact point for a while now, right at the end cap of level 74 and right before 75. It was one of the main reasons why he was now “on a break” away from his party, because he was aiming at a smooth and painless transition towards the next level, ever since he had hit almost level 75 after getting the XP reward for the Demonic Sect subjugation Quest from the System, where he had also found me. If he were to somehow manage to also open his Third Eye, he would also probably jump directly to 75 and enter a new “realm” of evolution, since the 75-100 bracket was already within the realm of what mortals mostly perceived as demigods.
Ignoring all warnings, Fung just said that he trusted me, and immediately proceeded to take away the “virginity” of his Third Eye chakra meridian. After scrunching up again for about 10 minutes and then fainting for another half an hour or so, he woke up with a victorious smile on his face and announced that he had successfully cleared his Third Eye chakra, and that he was now able to extend his branch-tentacle to the outside world through that pathway.
I immediately made him try and manipulate one of the spirit stones, and the results came back positive. He could also safely “retrieve” and “deposit” back any Qi from inside of the stones, which now also made him a potential victim of abuse in case anyone ever found out what he was capable of, so I knew that he would truly keep his mouth shut about this.
I asked Lingfeng why he wasn’t trying to do the same, but he gave me a sad smile and told me that he had no branch to spare anymore on his spirit roots for such a thing. When I tried to look at Lingfeng with my spirit-root sight, the dude had an absolutely massive tree-of-life sprouting throughout the top of his head from the crown chakra, and it was both ghostly light-blue in appearance but also very, very bright, like some sort of beacon of hope in the darkness. All of the branches had some sort of complex runic systems carved into them, and from the bottom to the top of the tree hung some things akin to “fruits”, which I realized were his spells. The “fruits” were complex 3-dimentional intertwined runic circles and formations that were always spinning and twisting in spectacular fashion, and I couldn't even make heads or tails out of even a single one of them.
On the “lower” branches of the tree hung the more basic types of spells, the ones that a character had usually started out with or had learned first, then as the branches got higher and higher, so did the skills hanging down from the branches got even more complex, until one reached the Pinnacle of the tree, where the most dangerous, high level or and Ultimate skills lay at.
Come to think of it, doesn’t this whole Spirit Tree actually look like a MMORPG’s typical skill tree, Timmy? With all of the upper skills unlocks being dependent on the bottom skills? It kind of does to me!
Will I also have to “hang” some spells down from my Spirit Branches? Won’t them being “mobile tentacles” mess up the whole thing? Shudder!
Lingfeng also seemed to have a Spirit Tree that was sort of unbalanced onto one side, but that’s probably just because his Wind specialisation had demanded that, or because he had not ever possessed enough skill points to counterbalance it on the other side. Still, I did not think that it affected him that much, since he was almost a FUCKING DEMIGOD!
Still, I urged him to try and do the “braiding” method and see if it helped him somehow with the Third Eye chakra opening.
After he spent about 30 minutes with his eyes closed and a scrunched up face that was twitching from time to time, he suddenly opened his eyes with a panicked look on his face, then just uttered a few words:
"FUCK! I think I just broke the seal on my Third Eye chakra by accident when I barely poked it! That was way too easy, why didn’t you warn me! I leveled UP! OH SHIIIIIEEET…I LEVELED UP...I’M NOT REAaa…(thunk)"
And then he fainted on the table.
"Not reaaaa... what?"
I looked up at Fungus, and then I saw that he was fucking panicking as well.
"Ok Fungus, spit it out. I’m the dumb one with no common sense again. What’s going on?"
"HE LEVELED UP TO 75! His Lightning Tribulation is coming, and he’s not prepared to face it! It's what he tried to tell us! HE’S NOT REAAA-DY FOR HIS TRIBULATION! If it arrives before he wakes up, it will most certainly kill him for sure!"
"His fucking WHAT? Tribulation? Why the fuck didn’t anyone tell me anything about that shit?"
"Because it’s common cultivator sense...Ugh...Never mind...You’re right, we should have told you..."
"How long will it take until he wakes up? How long do we have?"
"Fuck, I don’t know! It usually takes about three days of unconsciousness when the Third Eye gets opened at his level, and even then, the cultivator is usually kept within a safe area and surrounded by many formations that hasten his recovery-time and delay the arrival of the Tribulation before the level up process is even started. Nobody would ever dare to level up in such conditions as his current one. NOT out here in the wild, where he’s totally exposed. At this rate, the Tribulation will arrive within half a day and kill Elder Linfeng before we can do anything!!! AAAH THIS IS BAD! VERY BAD!!! WE HAVE TO MOVE HIM OUT OF THE SECT IMMEDIATELY!!! If the Tribulation arrives and he’s still in the Sect, every building and cultivator within his proximity will get turned into ashes! We have to at least move him out of the Sect’s borders RIGHT NOW!"
Well, fuck me sideways. If what Fung says is right, then we are indeed in deep trouble. Still, I might just have one last ace up my sleeve that would get me out of this shit, but I have to work fast. It’ll just have to stake it all on the fact that the System is not THAT advanced to be able to control natural lighting to such a degree that it would ignore the laws of physics.
"Fung, do you trust me?"
"Yes, why, what brought that up?"
"Then Fung, you will do as I tell you and not try to second guess me for even one second. Lingfeng’s life might depend on it!"
"Sure, what do you need?"
"I need you to run back to your Clan as fast as you can and bring me every fucking piece of heavy chain and metal armor that you can get your hands on. Quality does not matter, as long as it is metallic and it covers every part of the body. Don’t look at me like that, I know what I'm doing. The heavier and the more skin it can cover, the better. We are aiming for total coverage here, head to toe, face included, no gaps whatsoever. NO GAPS! IT'S EXTREMELY IMPORTANT! And make sure to bring back some steel wiring as well, so we can connect all of the metal pieces together! If you can, also call that Bang dude from the forge, we could use his metal welding skills and his rickshaw to carry Lingfeng out of the Sect. And if you’re dropping by the forge, see if they have any metal spikes of any sort. It does not matter what they are, they can even be the fence decorations or even metal spears or pikes, it makes no difference for what we need, just as long as they are made out of solid metal!
"W...what are you trying to do?"
"I’M TRYING TO SAVE LINGFENG!" I state resolutely!
"By dressing him up in metal? ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY? Metal attracts lighting! It’s like painting a target on his head for the Tribulation and telling it “STRIKE HERE”!"
"Ah, you poor sob! I’ll have to introduce you to the concept of Physics someday soon. NOW SHUT UP AND GO DO AS I TOLD YOU! DOUBLETIME!"
"HAIIII!" Fungus ran out of the house at triple speed.
Of course, I did not have the time to explain to the idiot the concept of a Faraday Cage, which at this moment was honestly the only thing I could think of that would save Lingfeng’s ass from the “heavenly” wrath of nature.
I now also had an unconscious body to move out of the Sect, and no idea how to do that. Good thing that I had I told Fung to also ask for a rickshaw. While Fung was desperately running around, I began to prepare a lot of medical supplies and potions, because I was certain that Lingfeng would need them by the end of this whole thing. I did not think that we would be able to build a “perfect” Faraday Cage, nor that the armors would be able to properly handle the lightning strikes. There was also the issue of the noise a lightning blast creates, which could rupture eardrums without any problem. I began to wrap bandages around Lingfeng’s face, making sure that his ears had cotton plugs stuffed into them and that the bandages were holding extra cotton tampons over his ears and eyes for protection, so that his retinas would not get incinerated. He was now looking like a mummy, and nobody would have been able to recognize him unless they had looked at his robes. Which I also promptly began to wrap with bandages soaked into a fire-retardant potion that I had cooked earlier on with my alchemy experiments, since I did not want Bang to suspect that our “experimental mummy” subject was in fact an Elder of the Sect.
After an hour and a half or more of waiting, Fung came back with Bang and his rickshaw, which was now filled with iron pikes of different lengths and designs. Bang was also sporting an equally confused look on his face, especially when we had dragged mummy-Lingfeng out of the house and had tossed him into the back of the rickshaw. His silence was instantly bought by Fung, who had produced 10 full gold coins for him, which was almost his salary for a few months. We then lay some tarp covers on top of the mummy and pikes, and then we ran out of the sect through the nearest door, heading for a decently remote and empty earthen field where not much in the environment could catch fire if lightning struck there, nor would it attract too much attention from the Sect. The guards at the entrance of the Sect did not even bat an eye at our departure, since they had already gotten used to our trips to the forest for a couple of months now.
Once we got to the field, we dragged Lingfeng down from the rickshaw, then told Bang to give us a hand with dressing the mummy up in full plate-and-chain. Fortunately, Fung had listened to my requests, and had stolen a lot of heavy-looking steel and iron plate pieces from his Clan’s guard barracks and armory inside of his ring, plate pieces which we were now all applying to Lingfeng’s wrapped up mummy body. In the end, he wound up looking like some sort of metal golemn adorned in a mish-mash misfit of armors all jumbled up together. Bang began to be even more jittery when I had asked him to weld all of the metal pieces together, and kept inquiring who the bandaged dude was. Fung almost spilled the beans when I cut him off, and then I told Bang that mummy-dude was a life-sentenced criminal that had been queued for execution, but had given up his body for research purposes with the condition that we would not dissipate his soul and allowed him to go in the afterlife once we were finished. It took another 10 gold coins to shut him up properly, but in the end we managed to create a barely-acceptable Faraday Cage Armor around Lingfeng’s body. The rest of the time we spent planting the iron rods and spears into the ground around the plated “corpse”, and the whole scene now looked like some sort of fucked up summoning ritual with a metal knight sacrifice in the middle. As we were planting the lightning rods, the weather kept becoming more and more gloomy, and dark clouds were congregating above us.
When we heard the first thunder, we knew that we had to haul ass and leave.
Lingfeng became forced to endure the ordeal all by himself. I just prayed that the lightning rods and the armor would suffice.
After we ran away, we took shelter in a nearby cave, where the lighting would not be able to follow us and we would still be able to keep an eye on the Tribulation.
Sure enough, after one more hour of waiting, the skies had grown really dark and angry right above Lingfeng, and the first bolt struck.
It hit a nearby lightning rod, leaving it red-iron steaming hot, but missing Lingfeng altogether.
The blast air-wave from the strike hit us hard, and I was able to only hear my ears ringing for the next few minutes because of the noise impact.
I do not know if you have ever experienced a lightning strike up close and personal, but I had been through one when I was still a kid back on Earth. Dad had been driving me to grade school during a particularly stormy day, when the car ahead of us had suddenly found itself struck by lightning. The resulting air blast had shattered the windshields of all the cars in a 20 meter radius, mine included, and I had been left with tinnitus for the better half of a month after that. It had also left a deep impression on me about how fierce the fury of nature can become. The blast had been even more violent than detonating a stick of TNT.
And now poor Lingfeng was out there all alone, swallowing the whole punishment with his metal body. In all honesty, I had no idea how the “normal” Tribulation Transcendence ritual went, but I could bet that a lot of formations were involved in the shielding of the target, which would also probably cost a fuckton to create. I was pretty sure that the 20 gold we had just spent was quite a bargain, if the outcome became positive.
Since we were all almost deaf, Fung used the party chat feature to message me instead.
*That’s one strike down, six more to go.*
*Why six?*
*Because he’s level 70+. That means a total of 7 strikes minimum. I just really hope the Elder is OK and this crazy idea of yours works as planned!*
*Me too big guy, me too!*
*I still think that you are nuts for dressing him up in a metal suit like that though!*
*Point taken and ignored. Now shut up and watch what happens from now on.*
I had most certainly grown fond of Lingfeng. Though he was rather stoic and reserved, and maybe a little bit crotchety at times, he was still quite a nice person and had helped me out a lot. Without him taking me along to join the Sect, I have no idea what would have happened to me after the whole dead Hero fiasco had ended. I probably would have wound up dead in a ditch somewhere.
*BA-THOOM!*
A second strike hit another of the pikes, with equally heated results.
Seemingly annoyed by the “resistance” and the “cheat mode” of the target, the Tribulation seemed to grow even bigger, and released an even brighter lightning bolt. Unfortunately, this one also struck a metal pike.
In the end, Lingfeng had been forced to take the brunt of the lightning strikes with his body and armor for only the last two falling bolts, after the Tribulation had gotten really pissed off and had increased its precision to a very accurate degree.
That had left his armor smouldering and red hot, but when we had reached him, he was still alive. He was now sporting some very nasty burns all over his body, but at least he was still breathing. I chugged a few healing potions down his throat, and then began to tend his wounds. When Bang saw who the mummy had really been, he had literally fainted, so myself and Fung had been forced to drag back both of the bodies inside of the rickshaw through the sect gates.
After we had arrived back at my place and I had parked Lingfeng onto my bed after unwrapping and changing him, Bang came around as well. We then both forced him to promise us to not tell a soul about what had happened, but it did not take much persuasion to convince him. Nobody would have believed his tale that he had seen someone survive a 7-strike Tribulation by only dressing up in plate armor and just standing there like a dummy for the lightning to hit anyway.
A couple of days later, Lingfeng rebooted his brain and then woke up.
"I’m alive???? I’M ALIVE! I’m not dead? HOW THE HELL AM I NOT DEAD!??!!
YOU TWO! WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO ME!!?"
"HAHA! Elementary, my dear Lingfeng! We employed the ancient forgotten technique of Faradayius Keigius to spare you from the wrath of the Heavens. You still took some damage though, so sorry about that…"
"Yeah, no problem...It’s just some minor flesh wounds, I’ve had much worse… NO WAIT!!! WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO AGAIN? WHAT ANCIENT TECHNIQUE?!!!"
I then began to recount to Lingfeng about what we had done, and he became absolutely flabbergasted. I could see his brain was short circuiting, so I began to explain to him the principle of electrical energy discharge and the path of least resistance.
"So you’re saying that dressing up in fucking full plate would actually INCREASE your chances of surviving a Tribulation?"
"Well, no, not any plate. It all needs to be connected as one piece, to allow the energy from the lightning to go through the metal and then into the ground. But overall, yes, if you prepare a suit of armor for this exact purpose, then the lightning wouldn’t be able to do anything to you anymore, no matter how many times it struck."
"That’s fucking insane...and also brilliant! Why the fuck am I not surprised anymore? Child, you are something out of this world altogether, I swear!"
Hah! Lingfeng, if you only knew, if you onliiiii knew...