I woke up next morning with a squeezing sensation inside of my chest. The feeling of anxiety and existential dread that had avoided me for the last few months was finally making its presence felt. I assumed that this was because the lingering effects of the Emotional Suppression formation had finally worn off, and I had regained my full faculties.
Everything began to feel quite...disturbing…
Aaargh!
What the hell have I been thinking when I told Lingfeng that I had killed the Hero of the Sun? Honesty is one thing, but being suicidal is another! Yet I blurted that shit out like it was of a minor significance! I should be glad and praising the Nine Heavens that I had my head still attached to my shoulders! Because I HAD also seen Lingfeng chop people up into pieces similar to cabbages with total nonchalance, like it was an everyday occurrence for him, so I knew what he was really capable of. How the hell was he able to remain so cruel and unflinching everyday?
After remembering even the mere sights of blood that I had been exposed to recently, the feeling of anxiety inside of my chest grew even larger.
Oh my god, the blood and the guts!
Remembering the guy that had turned himself into a sandwich party by running into the silk wires I had set as a trap, and the joyous laughter that I was emanating after he had killed himself thinking only about looting his body, it became obvious that something had really been wrong with my head for the last few months!
Holy shit!
A person had just died in front of me and I didn't even flinch! It doesn't matter that he was some demonic cultivator bastard that had it coming, that had still been a true living, breathing human being with feelings, fears and desires that had gotten turned into meat paste in the blink of an eye because of my scheming, but the only way in which I had perceived him inside of my mind during that period was similar to that of an object.
I could remember that this was one of the main tactics of indoctrination for the soldiers joining the army after the Second World War, which was the act of dehumanising the enemy, aka educating the soldiers to think that the enemies were only inanimate objects instead of people like “target dummies” or “helmets”, after the military had seen the statistics coming out of both World Wars that showed that barely even 20% of all military forces had shot directly at each other, with most just shooting off-target or purposely missing and even less of a percent shooting with the actual intent to kill during both World Wars.
But there had been nobody to whisper such thoughts inside of my mind over here in this new world, it was something that I had done unwittingly to myself, and in all honesty I did not like the person I was becoming very much!
Transforming into a “machine” that remains unphased by such cruel acts and occurrences is a sure-fire way to wind up in the loony bin. Whatever that suppression field had done to me, it had severely affected my capacity for empathy and proper emotional responses. Were my watchers that afraid that I might go off the rails that they had felt the need to keep that formation on all of the time?
And Lingfeng had known it all along, yet he did not even say a word to me!
Fucking hell man, I thought we were friends! Or at least something approaching that stage.
I even spilled all of my cultivation secrets to him!
Fucking Stockholm Syndrome! Fucking stupid!
If that wasn't a bad move, I do not know what could be called one!
“Never reveal the hidden aces up your sleeve! Always have enough to spare, because when the true shit hits the fan, you will probably need to use them all.” Earth Dad always used to say.
Oh fuck, oh shit, I am in deep trouble, am I not?
Every fucking person in this place is a shade away from psycho, and most likely out to get me in one form or another, even Lingfeng!
After I killed the Hero of the Sun…*HURK*(taste of vomit in mouth)
Oh...shit!
Oh my god!
I just realised I killed somebody!
I'm a fucking murderer!
AAAAARGH!
*Huff....hi...iic!*
Oh Gandalf up in Heavens, I think I am hyperventilating!
Shit, is this what a panic attack feels like?
Timmy: Kid, you really need to calm yourself down, if you keep thinking about yourself in that way, you are going to wind up getting a Qi deviation and become mentally deranged.
Ah Timmy, my trusted companion! Be honest with me, have I become some sort of cruel unflinching monster without even realising it?
Timmy: If that's your definition of “monster”, then I think everybody else on this planet should be considered at the level of “eldritch abominations” based on your evaluation, hurr hurr.
Gee wiz, thanks a lot for those great words of encouragement, your twisted little circuit board.
Ok, breathe in slowly…
Breathe out…
You can figure this out…
Calm minds live, panicked minds die…
*HEEF*
*HUFF*
Still, the bloody occurrences of the last few days kept repeating themselves inside of my head over and over.
One of the most traumatising experiences for me had been the death of that young Flame Templar in the front yard of my house, where I had not been able to do anything about it. I had see his life slip away between my fingers, making me feel incredibly powerless at that moment, even though there was so much “magic” in this world that could have helped the guy. I needed to find some sort of strong healing spell as soon as possible. I can't even begin to imagine what I would do if something similar were to happen to Fung, Liliam or even that bastard Lingfeng. I promised to myself that I would never let that sort of shit happen before my eyes, ever again!
I now had that stupid rooster and his infinite regeneration meat that I could milk for its Regeneration Alchemical Essence. If I could get enough of that stuff, then maybe I would be able to create some sort of regeneration pill that could even help with the detached limbs and…
No...stop thinking that way!
That rooster is a living creature, so you cannot simply keep on abusing it like that! Even though it does not feel any pain, it does feel fear and other feelings instead. The shortest way to become a monster is to stop caring about those feelings in the first place.
But...if I do not carve the bird up, then I won’t be able to harvest enough Regeneration Essence to create the pills that I need to save other lives!
Arrgh! Why the hell is everything so complicated!
“There will always be some sort of a tradeoff for kindness, something taken away from you everytime you help others. It's just up to you to figure out whether you can “afford” that price or not. Remember, the way to Hell is always paved with good intentions”, Earth Dad used to say.
Man…*sniff*, I miss Earth Dad so much right now... he had been one of the most positive aspects from my life that I could remember from my Earth time. Considering how shitty Earth truly was as a planet, I could have wound up with a drunkard of wife-beater as a father, and a crack-head prostitute as a mother, but I had been lucky (or blessed) enough to have been born into the family of my former parents, which had been pretty fucking awesome on the overall. Sure, they still had their own flaws, but too few worth mentioning compared to the average masses. And because I had been born into this world without a “new” pair of actual parents, unless you counted the cloning tank as my “mom”, my emotional attachment for my previous parents was still quite high, making me miss them a lot, especially when I was down in the dumps like right now.
So, I just cried in my pillow like a little boy missing his daddy. I cranked the floodgates open, letting it all out. I FUCKING HATED THIS WORLD!
And that's how Liliam found me, with me bawling my eyes out into my pillow like a little child.
"Ow jeez, roomy, what is wrong with you? Why are you crying like that? Are you hurt? Should I get you a potion? Is it that time of the month again?" Liliam immediately jumped to my bedside, trying to take my temperature and see if I had a fever.
When she put her forehead against my own, I immediately felt a rush of blood come up into my face, as my gaze had inadvertently wound up staring down the cleavage of her dangling blouse, leaving me marveling at her undisguised twin mountain peaks. I pushed her away before she got even more handsy, or before I winded up doing something that I might have regretted. I was still a guy in mind after all, so I cannot pretend that I had not thought about having my way around with Lillian under the pretext that “hey, we’re both girls in here, so it's just fine”. Oh, the lessons I could teach her.
No...Bad boy! Get your head out of the gutter, perv!
"A shit...no...Lliam, it's not that, thank you for asking. I just had a bad dream and a lot of useless emotions that I had tried to ignore have come flooding back to the surface." I wiped the snot and the tears away from my face. "It hurts in a place that I do not think I can even reach yet..." I admitted.
…
Hmm...
Or can I?
I mean, I DO have Spiritual Roots now, right?
I Immediately went into my “inner vision” mode, and I took a gander at my own Heart dantian. I could literally see how the entire thing was cramping because of my recent emotional rush.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
Shit, so Timmy wasn't joking when he was talking about that Qi deviation! I've almost hurt my Heart dantian and adjacent meridians with all of that negative thinking! I gotta be more careful with such emotional outbursts in the future!
I have to calm down immediately!
"Liliam, would you please be a sweetheart and go make me a cup of tea? Use the leaves from inside the third jar from the second shelf in the kitchen, the one with the “ZZZ” blue label. It’s a mild relaxant, and I think I need one right now."
"Sure, roomie! Be right back!"
"Thanks. And add lots of honey! I like mine sweet!"
"Will do!"
I resumed inspecting the pathways to my Heart dantian, and made a short plan about what I should do in case things went nasty. First, I had to find some sort of “defibrillator” in case my heart stopped, since all of the other organs had also been stopped to get modified by the System the moment I had opened the pathways towards them.
Therefore, I emptied a few spirit stones of their remaining elemental Qi by transferring it away, leaving them “ready” for a different type of charge. What I needed right now was a bunch of Lightning Qi, but you could only find something like that during storms, where Lightning hit the earth inside the leftover fulgurites, or by simply absorbing it from the heavens directly if you were a Lightning Cultivator. Since I did not want to have to go into a storm with spirit stones in hand to most likely get fried by a random heavenly strike, I had to go with the second route, aka find a Lightning Cultivator.
Once I had Lightning spirit stones, I think I had a general idea about how to create something akin to a defibrillator by using the spare parts from the Pill Forge. The spirit stone attachments that usually held the stones in place during the pill forging process would do nicely for that purpose, since they were removable in the first place.
After that, I would ask Liliam to assist me during the opening of my Heart dantian, and zap me if my heart ever stopped.
I could almost see it now...
Rubbing two lightning charged spirit stones together!
CLEAR!
STAT!
*BZZT*
*PLONG*
She’s flat-lining, Doc! Fondling of her mountain peaks with the spirit stones isn’t working!
ACK! Stand back! I must give her mouth to mouth then!
MMMPHF...
Doc...that’s too much mouth to mouth…Ah, now even the tongue…
*Slap*
*PPow*
I slapped myself over the face with both of my palms.
Enough of those thoughts, you perv! Damn sexually repressed teenager!
But on the other hand, I am glad that I was getting these sorts of thoughts again, which were more in line with my current hormonal youngster stage.
When Liliam came back with my tea, I asked her if she knew any Lightning cultivators, so she told me that she knew a couple, but that they were all “weirdos”, so she needed to know what I wanted one for. I told her that I needed some “Lightning Qi” at hand for the opening of our Heart dantians, to safeguard us in case something went wrong with the process.
Liliam pointed me in the direction of the Arts Pavillion, where a guy named Xibei was supposedly the owner of some rare-ass pure Lightning Spiritual Roots, which were considered to be a mix-phase between Air and Fire roots in the “usual” handbook of the cultivators, even thought I knew that in reality Overcharged Plasma had very little to do with Air, since it could exist anywhere, even in the vacuum of space. Heck, 99.999% of all the observable Universe is plasma!
Still, I took the time to relax and enjoy my tea before doing anything else for the day. I was still feeling rather upset about the whole emotional suppression formation. Why wasn’t Lingfeng and for that matter, Liliam affected by it in any way? Did the formation have some sort of a “filter list” built into it that would bypass and ignore certain targets?
I got my answer to that later in the day, when Fungus came to the house with the absolutely ugly expression on his face, complaining that he had been through some horrible nightmares last night, and that his emotional state was unstable, making him worried whether this was some sort of side effect of the cultivation techniques we had been practicing.
Meh! So I guess he had also been affected by the formation and was now recovering. I told him not to worry about the cultivation techniques, and that it was the house’s Emotional Suppression formation that had been at fault for everything that he was feeling.
I also asked him if he knew this Xibei guy, and he told me that the dude is the same class as Jin, and that they are friends. I hoped that any person that had enough patience to put up with Jin would be able to spare some time out of his schedule to give us a hand with the Lightning charge.
After I got out of bed and fixed my disheveled appearance by changing into a new set of clothes, we all headed towards the Arts Pavillion to see if we could find this Xibei guy. Once we got to the main door, the guard there told us that he is not inside, but that we should try the back road that goes through the water gardens, because there was a high chance of us finding him there, but to keep away from Lew under the bridge.
We took the detour, and we finally found a red-painted bridge that was crossing a lazy river stream. On the bridge, a poshly-dressed guy with a portable harp was having a faceoff with a big blue-green...guy-thing? Ogre? No...Troll? Yep, Troll, most definitely, Trolls have those huge-ass tusks jutting out, while Ogres have them much smaller.
Lol...under-the-bridge Troll...so cliche, waaah!
Before the posh guy could even strum the first few notes on his harp, the Troll instantly appeared behind him, grabbed him by the legs like a headless chicken, and then tossed him over the railing straight into the river mud, harp included.
*KSPLASH*
*Boiiiiinggg* A few of the harp’ strings broke.
"ʂէօօքìժ! ավ վմ ҍɾìղց ղҽҟҟìժ քìąղօ էօ ƒìէҽ?"
The Troll retreated to his underbridge dwelling while scratching his ass, while we rushed to the posh guy’s help, picking him up from the river mud.
"Shit man! Are you allright? What the hell happened there…"
"Ah...yes...thank you for your kind assistance,(Cough...PTEW)...young maidens and...Mister Fung, right?." The posh dude brushed the mud off his now-ruined expensive clothes while sporting a frog-silk wig on his head.
"Do you need a hand with that..."
"AH, do not mind my ragged appearance, It has become a common occurrence to me when trying to defeat that pestilent nincompoop from yonder underbridge. I shall restore my honor one of these days, eventually...Until then, I consider this an exercise in tempering one’s spirit when faced with nigh-undefeatable odds. We have been at this for a while now, so do not worry about my wellbeing. What are you three doing here anyway? Not many people pass through this road, and almost everybody knows to keep away from the bridge, unless they want to wind up face-down in the mud."
"Erm...we’re actually looking for a person named Xibei, because we could use his assistance with a cultivation experiment. You wouldn’t happen to know him?"
"Ah, then this is a most fortunate encounter! For it is I, Xibei, right before your very eyes, Bard extraordinaire and seeker of the Arts." He performed an exaggerated bow, while taking off his frog-silk wig and using it as a hat flip.
"How may this slightly damp troubadour be at your service?"
"Oh...wow...you’re Xibei? Hah! Lucky! Yes...Senior, we could use your assistance in gathering a bit of Lightning Qi! We have devised a method that would be able to harvest Lightning Qi if used properly, and we want to test it out! We heard that you possess pure Lightning Spiritual Roots, so we thought of asking for your assistance during our experiment, if you would be willing to help? We can refund any Qi you spend with spirit stones, so it will not affect your cultivation."
"A way to harvest Lightning? Why...that sounds positively brilliant!" I could see his eyes sparkle with glee. "Of course I would be willing to help! Cough...but first, if you do not mind, can you wait until I go grab a set of spare clothes? I am...undignified at this moment."
"Sure, do whatever you have to do...We can meet up at my house, if you are willing...It's the third house on the right, top of the hill on Goodstreet. Look for the broken fence."
"Alright, meet you there in half an hour then." The self-titled Bard took off as a veritable storm of sparks, dashing away even faster than Lingfeng.
"Damn...he forgot his harp…"Fung pointed at the golden harp with the broken strings lying in the mud.
"Just store it in the ring, Fungus. We can give it back to him at the house. And let’s head back home, I have to prepare a setup of some sorts that will explain how the fuck we’re charging the stones with his Lightning. I’ll probably have to paint some stones over to look weird, so he doesn't ask too many questions about how we’re doing it."
And sure enough, just as he had promised, Xibei arrived at my house half an hour later, sporting a brand new set of clothes, looking freshly-bathed and trimmed and smelling like ladies perfume which only made him seem even more posh.
"Here...we picked up your harp for you…"
*BOiiioioingKloong*
"Ah, my lovely, how could I have forgotten about you!" Xibei grabs his harp, hugs it, then waves it away inside of his ring. Tcheh, another rich bastard confirmed.
"Ok, so, to put it simply that you may understand, I am an Alchemist and I have devised a way to modify an existing spirit stone through my Alchemy experiments to make it able to absorb Lightning Qi...maybe...at least in theory, I mean." I show a weirdly-painted spirit stone that had already been affixed inside one of my Pill Forge extensions to Xibei to sell my story thoroughly.
"Therefore, we need your assistance with testing the absorption rate, if any."
"Alchemy can modify even spirit stones? Why have I not heard about this before?"
"Shh...because it’s very, VERY secret! Fung punctuated by putting his hand over his mouth."
"VERY SECRET! Liliam added, and did the same mouth cradle."
"Special project for Elder Lingfeng." I tell the dazed youngster before he could poke at it more.
"I hope we can rely on your...discretion..., right?"
"My lips are sealed, and may the Heavens strike me down if I will ever speak a word about this!" Xibei exaggerated immediately.
I dragged Xibei into the living room, where we had propped the “blast shield” made out of the former chariot plated basket in such a way that it would leave a gap wide enough for him to stick his hand out, but not enough to see what we were actually doing.
I then asked him to start off with a small spark, and keep it there until I told him to increase the intensity.
He conjured a small electric arc between his fingers, and kept it there going at a slow rate. I immediately went into Qi-vision mode and began to tentacle the shit out of the Lightning Qi that he was giving off, storing it all inside of the painted spirit stones. The trickle was barely enough to fill a “cell”, so I had him double the output.
After adjusting it a few more times at around three and a half the initial power, I had found a way to steadily charge up my empty stones using his output.
I filled about 3 stones to the brim before he told us that he was out of Qi, so I immediately produced some “better quality” modified spirit stones for him, and I had him recharge his Dantian so we could proceed with another round. It took a while for him to recharge, since he was using the “normal” cultivation technique of expand-contract, but he eventually managed to filter out all of the elemental Qi and keep only the White. I even showed him my “results”, as I had kept one of the “painted” stones barely charged, to make it look that the process was working, but that the “absorption” rate sucked.
He was amazed at the painted stone, saying that such a thing was revolutionary, and that it did not matter if the stone took a lot of white Qi to charge, because such a Lightning charged spirit stone could prove the difference between life and death to a Lightning cultivator in combat, which would be able to directly absorb the Lightning QI contained within in case of emergency.
We kept repeating the process of charge-discharge-conversion until I had a basket full of Lightning Qi filled to 100% spirit stones, enough to go around for both the Heart dantian opening and some Alchemy experiments. Xibei had been very cooperative, and quite a pleasant company, as he kept humming soft tunes while he kept himself hidden behind the blast shield, as it did not affect his output. If anything, it seemed to help him. Seeing that he was so good at singing, I asked him if he could give Liliam some pointers when it came to her horrible screeching.
Fortunately, he had been forewarned by us about Liliam’s capacity to shatter eardrums, so he had only frowned deeply when he had heard her sing for the first time. When we had told him that Liliam had been partially deaf until a few days ago, he had become completely shocked. He said that her Zither skill was “decently high”, but that her mis-aligned singing voice definitely needed a lot of work to re-attune the notes into their proper places, and that he will most definitely ask his music teachers for a solution to the problem. In the end, they both tried a duet improv, with him singing and Liliam playing only the ZIther, and it went splendidly. It meant that Liliam wasn’t musically-disabled, but as Xibei had rightfully said, just mis-aligned with her notes inside of her brain. It would take a while to break the old habits and muscle memory to get her to sing well. After we had finished the experimentation, I passed Xibei a 50% purely-charged spirit stone as his reward for the day’s work, leaving him agape. For him, that stone was worth a fortune, since he had no idea about our ability to shuffle Qi inside of the stones, so he was treating it like the real rarity. Bewildered about his “gains” for only a single day’s-worth of Lightning Qi practice, he had left the house in a rush while thanking us, seemingly afraid that we might change our minds and take the stone back away from him at any moment.
I saw Xibei as he ran out of the house using his lightning speed buff while cradling that 50% spirit stone like it was his precious baby, and then vanising off towards the “rich” district of the Lower Sect, straight into the sunset like some Epic Ballad Hero.
I will probably have to talk to that moron as well about the risks of running at such velocities without a proper shield-buffer in front, before he kills himself by running into a bug at supersonic speed.