Fortunately this time around I was able to sleep in, because the rooster had been placed into the other room, which had its own sound suppression formation active so it did not matter how hard he tried to caw his heart out, I could not hear a thing.
Ah....Sweet pillow, why are you so soft? Please forever let me stay in your warm embrace. Fluffy, fluffy, snoozy time…
Still, I had to get the hell up, because I had a bunch of rather important things to do today, one of which could be fatal. I had decided to open my Heart dantian before lunchtime hit, but before that I needed to create some sort of makeshift defibrillator and also wait for Fungus to arrive before trying anything. Better to have two supervisors watching over the process, rather than just Liliam.
After dragging myself out of bed, I fiddled with the Pill Forge extensions to get something that resembled the shock-paddles of a defibrillator. Still, I had no idea how much of a charge I needed to keep inside of the spirit stones to get a precise shock. Too much or too little would be ineffective. The extensions had these weird comb-like structures that would pierce into every cell compartment of the spirit stone that was placed in the “socket” of the extension, to allow the stored Qi to migrate to the cauldron, but in the case of the overcharged Lightning Qi, it just caused the detached metal plate to release a spark of electricity. There were these two side-buttons that you could push to cause the comb-like structure to pierce into the spirit stone and unload the charge, but after that, a new spirit stone would be needed as a replacement. I screwed in a couple of tube-like filters around the metal handles of the Forge Extensions, ceramic accessories that used to be a part of the tea set that I had previously bought for the Petri dish experiments, to isolate the current away from the user since I did not want to have both the victim and the wannabe “doctor” zap themselves at the same time, making the ceramic tubes the ideal electrical insulator for such a job.
With my new shock-paddles ready, it was time for testing, so I needed a guinea pig. Fortunately, I had just the right subject in mind for that.
I went into the other room, and I took the rooster out of the cage. It kept trying to peck and scratch at me, seemingly very displeased at the manhandling.
"I am sorry little-big chicken, but my life and the lives of my friends are on the line, so I cannot afford to be merciful at this moment. Please forgive me!"
*Bzzt*
*Squak*
After experimenting a few times on the bird and getting a good approximation about the charge needed to penetrate through flesh, I now had a few more headless chicken bodies lying around, since I would usually just behead the creature once it got a heart attack because of the overcharge, with the body going into cardiac arrest and "dying" for a few minutes before it got rebooted by the regeneration. It was actually faster to just chop the old body off, and wait for a new one to “spawn”, rather than wait for the shock recovery time.
Mental note to self: Lightning can still stop a heartbeat and mess up the nervous responses, even if somebody has a monstrous regeneration like the rooster or the Hero of the Sun if they do not also have some sort of internal resistance to powerful electric currents. It can also probably fry the brain as well. Will need to experiment more, but for now I have caused enough suffering to the poor chicken, so I should just leave it to rest.
After filling the room with the smell of burned feathers and singed chicken meat, I went to boil and pluck the feathers away from the new chicken corpses, and make myself some brunch.
Fung arrived just in time to help me with the cooking, taking over the plucking duty. I was even saving all of those feathers, to make myself another fluffy pillow out of black chicken plumage.
After all three of us indulged ourselves in another round of chicken-based delights, we proceeded to the main course, which was the opening of the Heart dantian.
I had Fung and Liliam on standby with healing potions, pills and the defib paddles just in case something went wrong, as I went into “hentai tentacle rape” mode on myself.
I took my “strongest” branch tentacle, and I pushed on the membrane separating the Spinal meridian away from the Heart dantian in one strong heave, making it burst without much struggle. The moment when I felt the white Qi rush into my Heart dantian, I was assaulted by an unexplainable mashup of a myriad of emotions all jumbled up together, and also sensed a strong “hiccup” sensation inside of my chest, as my heart slowly began to shut down.
Timmy: Heart currently undergoing upgrade. Please stand still and remain calm, pumping action will resume naturally in 1 minute, 22 seconds.
Ok, so no defib needed yet, that’s good. Still, man, this mix of emotions? Eugh! It’s like a cat had just licked the whole emotional spectrum and it was now coughing back the resulting hairball full of a sentimental-mixup straight into my face.
Why the hell was the heart the center of emotion anyway? That should be the limbic system, temporal lobe and amygdala if we were to follow normal human anatomy! Goddam System shenanigans!
My heart “rebooted” by itself after a minute and a half just like Timmy had said, and I rushed to the Emotional Suppression formation immediately, to turn it back on, hoping that it would help with that uncanny emotional rush I was getting. I did not want to have to deal with that emotional Molotov at that particular moment, so it was better to just postpone it.
Once the runic circle was back online, I immediately felt my emotional state get stunted.
"Ugh, what did you do! I feel like it’s just lost something important to me, but don’t know what!"
"Sorry Fungus, I just activated the Emotional Suppression formation, because it might help with my Heart upgrade. Just bear with it for a few minutes."
Sure enough, going into Qi-vision mode, I could see the formation glowing active and pushing some strange gray Qi that was accumulating inside of my heart dantian.
Wait, SERIOUSLY? You motherfuckers, so this is how this shit was doing its job? Infesting me with unwanted types of Qi? AW HELL NO! Fuck THAT shit! I thought that it would just help me calm down during my turmoil for a little bit, not turn me back into an emotionless zombie again!
I instantly turned off the Emotional Suppression formation, and then I began to furiously expunge out of my Heart dantian all of those motes of weird gray Qi that had accumulated inside of the dantian from the effects of the formation.
Timmy: Your Intuition has detected a hidden debuff that has been previously applied to yourself. The debuff will now be displayed in your status screen, if you ever re-acquire it.
Timmy: You have furiously purged the unwanted Qi out of your meridian system.
Timmy: You have unlocked a new passive skill: [Emotional Stability, Heart of Unshakable Fervor]
This skill provides only a flat bonus, so it does not have a progress bar.
Description:
You will now be able to detect any hidden effects that might try to modify your mental or emotional state.
I showed Fungus the hidden option, and I told him to do the same and clear the strange Qi away from his Heart, once he opened his associated dantian.
Immediately after I had cleared away all of the suppressive gray Qi, I felt another rush of emotion overcoming me, so I began to helplessly leak water from my eyes. Liliam immediately jumped to embrace me, and I helplessly sank my head into her chest to hide the waterworks.
Oh well, better to cry my eyes out into a pair of tits, rather than into my pillow. They are much, much softer, so don't blame me for indulging a little bit. I think Fungus was also getting a boner, after staring at us for too long. Does he like the vulnerable crying-girl types? Personally, I could never stand those bi...types of women that pretended to be emotionally vulnerable so that the men would jump to their rescue the instant they fluttered their eyelashes and began to drip poisoned crocodile tears.
I mean, it's not like I was doing this whole emotional-cocktail shtick on purpose, it was just the lingering after effects of opening the Heart dantian.
After I had slightly calmed down, I described to my two friends the process and the weird sensations involved into it, so that they knew what to expect.
After that, both Fung and Liliam took turns to open their own Heart dantians, as I stood by at ready with the paddles and the potions.
I began to worry when Fungus had taken more than 2 minutes to “upgrade” his own heart, but he was a big fellow after all, so the System probably had more “stuff” to add or remove inside of his chest compared to us little girls. I was getting afraid that he might lose one of his two barely functional neurons due to hypoxia, but he had pulled through without a hitch in the end.
Except that the aftermath of us opening our Heart dantians was that we were all now emotional messes, wailing out our own sentimental dissatisfactions to the world like cats on a fence during mating season.
"*Sniff* Waaah! I hate this fucking planet! I hate being an experimental byproduct! I hate the demonic sects, why can't they just leave me alone? Everybody here is retarded and cruel! And Lingfeng's being a bastard when I thought he was my friend! Waaaaah!"
"My mom and dad never believed in me! They always said that I can't sing, an'(hic) that I should quit! Why couldn't have they been more supportive! Everybody in my family th(hic)nks I'm crazy for persisting and avoids me like the plague! Waaaaah!"
"My dad never loved me! My brothers all want to kill me! I'm just a political tool and sacrificial offering! Uncle Tai loves me more than my own real father! Shi doesn't want to love me at all even though she was my childhood friend, and likes that stupid Jin instead! And my best female friend is a she-man! Waaaaah!"
After we had all exhausted our emotional energy, the three of us just crashed down onto each other in a messy pile, and just fell asleep on the floor wherever we stood, similar to the aftermath of a college drunken party.
It took us the rest of the entire day to adjust ourselves to our new emotional state, including the new highs and lows, which seemed to have been enhanced a little bit. It was all rather unpleasant, but we had managed to pull through. It was a small sacrifice to be paid for the opening of one of the Major meridian pathways in the body. The act of opening the pathway had also given us quite a significant chunk of CXP, pushing us closer to the next level-up.
After Fungus had left in the evening, I was left wondering about my own situation while munching down on some glazed chicken nuggets, since things were not looking very rosy for me at all. I still had the demoniacs and the Templars breathing down my neck, and I had no idea what to do about them. I couldn't simply just pack my bags and run away from the sect, because that seemed like a suicidal thing to do, which would most likely land me into the hands of the demoniacs. But if I stayed put, there was a very high chance that I might wind up in the hands of the Templars instead, and get purged as an “abomination against creation”. I was especially worried about the Flame Templars, since those were the “easy to judge” kind of fellows, and I was landing in the negative spectrum as far as they were concerned. So far, my only buffer against the madness of the world had been Lingfeng, and I had no idea what to do or what to think about him anymore.
I didn't really want to lose him as a friend, so I had to do something about that deep-seated guilt of his, which would necessitate the deployment of certain “drastic measures” from an emotional standpoint to get him “fixed”. But I could also not forgive him for acting with so much distrust against myself when he was not in my presence. Still, “fixing” him would temporarily grant me more room to maneuver, so it had to be done.
Therefore, I spent the rest of the evening just delving deep into my pre-loaded memory packages that were related to Lei Lei, and trying to get her behavioral mannerism, speech patterns and weird accent just right. Inside my head more than a third of her entire life had been forcibly stored, it was not just the end that had been squashed into there, so I had plenty of reference points from which I could draw inspiration.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
I still had no idea how the demoniacs had been able to gather so many of the girl's memory fragments, especially since she had been dead for almost two years. Two years is plenty enough for an entire body to turn into bleached bones, and I do not think that those contained too many memories. This must have been related to the soul of the girl or something along those lines.
Fortunately, I had the silence formation to help me keep the noise limited to only the insides of my room, and I had also asked Liliam to leave me alone for the rest of the day, because I was still feeling “upset” about the previous emotional rush. Therefore, I had been able to practice enough in front of the mirror to get a decent facsimile of Lei Lei out into the open world, in preparation for Lingfeng’s “intervention”..
Lei Lei, wherever you are, please forgive me for doing this, especially for using your body and your image, but I think Lingfeng might be able to get over his trauma if I play my cards just right.
Next day during the evening, Lingfeng dropped by the house again and caught me fiddling with the Pill Forge, as I was trying to extract some of that Regeneration Essence from the leftover chicken meat of yesterday’s. Once I saw him, I immediately placed aside my alchemical tools, and went straight to the point.
"Lingfeng, your surveillance security measures suck."
"WHAT? How do you know that?"
"Because I caught the whole conversation you had with all of those bigshots about me. It was not intentional, just so you know, but it still happened, so I thought I’d let you learn about the fact from my own mouth."
"So it was YOU who triggered the spy alarms? How did you manage that anyway?"
"Well, you know how you have these series of formations built into the house, some of which are for monitoring the place? I was just sticking my branch-tentacles into the formation to see how the noise suppression thing works, when I hit the communication runic circle instead, catching your whole conversation. I have to say, if I was able to prod at the whole transmission by using such a simple method, then I’m sure as Hell that the demoniacs are able to do the same. You need better encryption software if you’re even going to do those sorts of meetings."
"Encryption WHAT? GIRL! AGAIN WITH THE WEIRD TERMS! ARRGH!"
"I’ll explain that later. For now, we have something more important to discuss, and that’s your guilt related to Lei Lei. Just like your healer girl Mina said, you NEED to get over your Lei Lei trauma. Lingfeng! I AM NOT LEI LEI! Sure, I may have her genes, but I DO NOT HAVE HER SOUL! You could count me as her identical twin if you want, but NOT AS HER. I am me, alive, and Lei Lei is dead and gone. You HAVE to accept that already and also accept the fact that what happened to her was not your fault.
I then rushed to Lingfeng and I grabbed his wrist in a vice grip before he could do anything.
"Stand still. I just got this skill when I leveled up, so I do not know if this will work but…"
I cut my other hand on one of the tips of the Pill Forge’s extensions and bled all over Lingfeng while yelling: "[Blood Memory Recall]"
Then I stuck my branch-tentacles across the runic circles of the house’s formation, short-circuiting them. It felt like sticking a fork into a power outlet while holding the handle, but the zap was a spiritual one, not of an electrical nature. Still, it provided enough of a charge to shock both me and Lingfeng at the same time, sending the both of us spasming on the floor.
After I got up from the shock, I put on my best acting face.
"Hey dere Liffy. Still wearing dem silly robes I gave yuz? Hiz Hiz!"
"L...LEI LEI! IS THAT YOU! What’s going on!"
"The crazy gal (I point to myself) callzed me back with her weird azz zkill...but I am only a zhattered fragment of the orizinal. I am vanizhing as we zpeek, Liffy.
You gotta let gowz of meez!
I'm just a shadow of the pazt... a…Memory in ze Blood. This is not miz body anymore, it's Trinaz.
With this zpell, I will be gonz foreverz, zo I need ya ta listenz!
I zu not have much timez left!
You keep blaming yourzelf, but you couldnt have knownz!
So, I havz to let yuz know!
Liffy! (smile)
I forgive youz!
Stop being so hard on yiurzelf!
I forgive youz! It wazan’t your fault! Yuz have to move on! Promize me, Okeiz?"
And then I hugged “Liffy” in the same way that Lei Lei always did, all the while singing a stupid nursery rhyme that she always hummed when bored.
After hearing everything I had said and the cradle song, Lingfeng just crumbled on his knees in front of me and began to cry like a wailing ghost, repeating over and over that he was sorry.
It took about two minutes before Lingfeng cried himself dry, but I just kept hugging him and patting his hair all through the duration.
In the end, I kissed him on his forehead and then I said:
"I havz to go now Liffy... take care of the girl for me, okeiz?"
And then I plugged my tentacles over the formation circles once more, shocking the shit out of both of us.
*Sizzle*
"Aaaaauch! What the f...uuuaah…"
"Lingfeng! What happened! I blacked out!"
Immediately after both of us had collapsed again, I jumped back onto my feet with a totally confused look on my face, and I asked Lingfeng what the heck had just occured, and why the fuck were his eyes red and my robes wet!
Timmy: you have earned the achievement [Deviant Soul Doctor]
Description:
Using your unorthodox methods, you have managed to patch the emotional hole in Lingfeng's soul.
You have earned the achievement [Oscar Nominee] for that bullshit performance you just put on. Lingfeng totally bought it! 🎥🏆
+5000 rep with Lingfeng
+500 rep with Hero of the Sun's former party
If you can manage to survive and go over level 50, Lingfeng will become available as a permanently recruitable character for your own party.
I then listened to Lingfeng as he detailed to me what had just happened during the [Blood Memory]. I put an absolutely shocked expression on my face, and told him that I did not expect for something that drastic to happen, but that I am glad that he could now finally move beyond his trauma.
After that, I brewed him a nice calming tea, as I chewed on a bitter healing pill to mend the cut on my hand.
"You know, I’m still pissed off at you. I thought we were buddies by now. You came into my house almost daily, ate my food, listened to me ramble, and helped me with a ton of stuff. I even got your ass through that Tribulation fiasco. I thought we had a decent relationship, but after listening to you during that conference, I’m not sure what to think about it anymore."
"I...I’m sorry. (Lingfeng drooped his head to the floor) Look...the truth is that you SCARE me. I’m an old person and I arrogantly thought about myself as being worldly and wise, yet you do not seem to make any sense to me. You are unpredictable, wild, with ideas unheard of, you act like a soldier that has been on campaign all of his life, you have no self awareness or common sense, and yet you still manage to accomplish things out of this world. Like making a puppy out of Fung, which used to be a terrible snob, inventing new and weird cultivation methods, revealing the diseases that exist in nature by using mere ceramic dishes, recharging spirit stones, manipulating Qi freely, saving me from a Tribulation while I was unconscious. Not to mention that you killed a fucking Ancient Demon in a bucket! Girl...these are not things a normal person could do! Not unless they were...special somehow."
"Is this about that “Blessed Children” bullshit that you all kept talking about?"
"Partially...well...Ugh...mostly."
"I’m not sure I should say anything to you anymore! What if you use it against me? Or snitch the info to your powerful friends."
"I...can’t blame you for thinking like that. But truly, I am sorry for my actions and mistrust so far. Still, you’re a smart girl, so you have to realise that a lot more is at stake than just simply dealing with the Demonic Sects in this tug of war. The whole world could be plunged into chaos if one of the Blessed Children decided to go on the bad side, or one simply got captured by the demoniacs and tortured for his knowledge."
"And if the Blessed Children did, what then? Turn bad, that is. Send your best men to kill them? Even though you would lose a lot of knowledge that only gods have the access to?"
"If it came to that, maybe. We would of course try to prevent such a loss by all means necessary, but if push came to shove with no other alternatives, then yes, I would kill a Blessed Child to save the common folk. The demoniacs we’re facing, they are not nice people, Trina! Entire villages have vanished during the last couple of months, with every man, woman and child having seemingly disappeared into thin air. Even the cattle were taken! If I had to pick between saving a village and the knowledge, I would still save the village."
"Even though that otherworldly knowledge might be exactly what would allow you to save even more victims in the future?"
"Ah, but how can we know such things? Should I risk the lives of those innocents on a maybe? No, I would not do that."
"What if it wasn’t a maybe, but a certainty? Would you sacrifice the village for the knowledge then?"
"Then I would weigh the overall gains and losses. If the knowledge was more valuable than those villagers, then it would be an excusable gesture, no matter what the cost. Personally though, I do not think that I would be able to just watch an entire village get slaughtered only for that piece of knowledge though, because for me, each life is priceless. A piece of knowledge bought in blood will forever remain tainted by it. But other people higher up the ladder than me might just accept such “losses” without even flinching. If it were up to me, I would make sure that I never had to make the hard choice in the first place. Trina, there are never just black or white outcomes or choices. The world is painted in shades of gray, and we just have to find the will to keep on pushing it towards the lighter areas."
"If only it were that simple. To tell you the truth, such a mentality will most likely get you into a lot of trouble in the future. I can tell you with certainty that things ARE going to get worse. How? I have no idea, but they will."
"Then do you admit…"
"That I’m one of the Blessed Children you keep talking about? Yes and No. Are YOU sure you want to know the truth? What if you can’t handle the truth?"
"Hah! What could be worse than the world getting destroyed by the demoniacs?"
"Is that your worst scenario? Then I’m sorry to tell you that your thinking is rather mild. "
Lingfeng narrowed his eyes, and stared back at me with a burning gaze.
"Elaborate!"
"Again, are you sure you want to know the truth? There's no going back after it."
"Better to die knowing what killed you, than perish in obliviousness!"
"Ok, it’s your ass in the fire then. Ok, listen. What if I told you that everything you know about the word, the earth, the gods, everything...IS FAKE?"
"F...FAKE? Fake how?"
"Fake as in everything you know or assume you know has been manufactured and served to you on a platter by a greater entity which has kept you and everyone on this planet for that matter, absolutely blind and stupid just for the enjoyment of a select few."
"Greater entity, like one of the gods?"
"No...worse. The “gods” you know about are feeble existences, they are emotional, can be killed, can be fooled, do now know or see everything, and depend too much on their believers. No, I am talking about an entity that can do ANYTHING it wants, without a need for resources or repercussions, and cannot be killed or destroyed by anything that exists in this world, since IT IS THE WORLD. The air you breathe, the food you eat, the water you drink, it is everywhere and inside everything. Even within yourself and your mind. It’s listening to this very conversation that we’re having right now, and it has flagged you as one of the few who “know” about it, which has put you on the “dangerous” entities list, whether you like it or not. Because the truth of this world is that it’s an entertainment park for other god-like beings from beyond the stars. They come here as small fragments of their greater selves, and live and die among you, but they are NOT from here. You call them Heroes, Demon Lords, Immortals, Saints, Demigods, Blessed Children, whatever, but they are all the same thing. They are “visitors” that come here to this world from beyond the stars or even from outside of this Universe, so that they may “enjoy” themselves and live extraordinary lives that makes them feel “special”, even if they end in tragedy. And the “Mother Earth” that you so much like to pray to, it caters to their every need, spoonfeeding them adventures and experiences at the expense of the locals, namely schmucks like you and the other guys from that conference plus the villagers that you so much like to defend. The planet “System” has no qualms about sacrificing anybody, if it fits the narrative needed for the “visitor’s” stories. And you just happen to have not one, but TWO “foreigners” inside of your sect right at this moment. What do you think is going to happen, eh? You think Momma System is going to let any of us rest? Or is she going to try and screw everyone over, even at the cost of women and children?"
"Two? Who’s the second?"
"Jin, obviously, DUH!"
"But...he’s nothing like you!"
"That’s because he opted to have all of his memories “cleaned out” before he came here. On the other hand, I retained mine. Jin is as real as any other person that has been born into this world, but that’s what makes this place special in the first place. Everything that happens to both the locals and the visitors is “real”, even though it’s all instigated by the System from behind the scenes. There is no better drama than REAL drama, and that’s the selling point of this whole “entertainment park” of a planet!"
"I...I...Ugh…man, this is some heavy shit. I did not think it was this bad…" Lingfeng just sprawled himself on the floor, gazing at the ceiling.
Shit, I think I just fried Lingfeng’s brain, he does not look very good. That, or Momma Earth has decided to suddenly mindwipe him because he now knows too much, and I would have wasted my breath for the last few minutes.
"How is Jin doing anyway? I have not seen his red hairdo anywhere for the last few days." I decided to change the subject.
"Uhm...the Flame Templars have been taking care of him. The Captain of their delegation is a pretty nice guy, and has taken upon himself the duty of tutoring the young lad. We are still trying to ascertain whether your claims about him being the Hero are true or not, but so far the boy has manifested an astounding amount of talent towards flame manipulation. The Captain of the Templars has remained absolutely baffled by the boy's prowess, yet he has complained to me that Jin is apparently still not over the loss of his former Fire Tome and is acting like a whiny little bitch. I just hope to see the lad can get over his trauma faster."
"Me and probably everybody else as well. I most certainly do not want to see a volatile Hero of the Flame ready to “erupt” at any sign of trouble, especially since a lot of it is bound to happen in the near future."