Shang Cang made complete recovery after his surgery. On the following day, he joined the Shennong Factory as a cleaner, mopping the dining hall and employee areas during the second shift. Naturally, there were fewer workers during the third shift. At the start of every shift, Shang Cang gave Li Yun the compass for safekeeping.
Shang Cang’s health was steadily improving and his head was clear. There were many opportunities in the factory and training program for employees to advance their position, but Shang Cang had turned down the offer.
“I like cleaning, it’s is relaxing.” Shang Cang dropped out of high school at a young age and wasn’t picky about the type of jobs he was doing. Even if he was qualified for other jobs, he preferred to clean. There wasn’t much thinking involved. He was more interested in navigating the compass and exploring the snowing mountain that his ancestors were unable to bypass. “I’m still stuck at the base of the mountain.”
“It’ll take some time to get used to it,” replied Li Yun. In the dream world, it was possible to perform unimaginable tasks like flight and invulnerability. However, in the compass world, there were certain rules that restricted movement. It wasn’t as stringent as Earth’s physics, but it was still difficult for anyone to practice.
Shang Cang thanked Li Yun for the advice and went to work. The following morning after Shang Cang’s shift, Li Yun would return the compass.
Inside the compass world, Li Yun’s movement wasn’t like before. After countless attempts, Li Yun could breeze through the beginning stages with his eyes literally and metaphorically closed.
“Here for another challenge?” The Queen Mother asked cooly sitting underneath her pavilion as she sipped her iced cold tea. She had sensed his arrival the moment he entered the compass.
“Trying to see if there is a trigger to skip this fight,” Li Yun answered honestly. No matter how much he had improved, the Queen Mother was simply too fast and too strong. It was fair to go against someone who had millions of times more experience than him. Typically in a fight against the so called unwinnable boss, there were triggers that would continue the story without actually winning.
“I have restricted myself to the sixth-step seed level, which is the level that you should be capable of defeating,” Queen Mother sensed Li Yun’s fustration. Warranted, he had died 37 times already.
“What does sixth-step even mean?” Li Yun did not understand her scaling. “If my travel speed is 500 kph, then yours is 2000 kph. The power scale isn’t equivalent.”
“Oh ho ho, you don’t think the fight is fair?” said the Queen Mother.
“The challenge was never fair. A five-year old kid, no matter how hard he trained, could never top a 21-year old Olympiad champion.”
“The fault lies not with the challenge, but with your perception that this realm restricts your silly concept of time and space. I am not traveling faster than you, but at the same speed.”
The passing of time in the compass was different from the real world. Whenever he entered, no matter how long time had passed, only thirty minutes would have passed in the real world. Unfortunately, the compass world was limited and contained. It was like walking around a closed looping map.
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Li Yun wasn’t deterred. He had gained some insights from Master Meng Shi and was ready for the 38th attempt against the Queen mother. He bent down to stretch his knees, getting ready for the boss fight. With a plan formed in his head and the sword out, he looked up at the icy woman. “I’m ready.”
The Queen Mother swung her arm and plunged the crystallized ice sword into Li Yun’s heart from the back. It was her signature opening move, to disappear behind the opponent and strike them dead. His body twisted to face her and unleashed his sword. The sword shielded his chest, waiting for the Queen Mother's first attack. During the several dozen times he had sparred with her, she had never changed her opening attack. It was possible that she was giving herself a handicap. Despite that, getting hit was unavoidable. If he sidestepped, her sword would home horizontally across and his body would be severed. It took Li Yun seven deaths to realize that the only way to avoid instant death was to block. The moment he used the iron sword to block, the ice sword shattered the iron sword, leaving behind iron shards that disappeared like pixie dust.
The logic didn’t make any sense to Li Yun. He had argued with the Queen Mother about how preposterous it was for an ice sword to break an iron sword.
“This is the rule of the land. My ice sword is simply stronger than yours.”
Going by game logic, his iron sword had 10 attack points going against 1000 attack points of the legendary weapon. The iron sword was destroyed, but it would reappear again in the next attempt.
Li Yun tightened his body and arms into a guard position. In the compass world, martial arts abilities were based on spiritual powers, not physical prowess. It was more restrictive than the dream world, but easier to move about than the real world. Everything was a manifestation of what he thought was his form.
The Queen Mother did not see his form in the same way he was seeing himself. To her, he was a speck of dust flying past her long silk sleeves.
“She must have weaknesses that she isn’t even aware of,” Li Yun thought. “She’s may not be used to scaling down her powers. Someone who’s all-powerful in their own realm might not know how to limit their own strength.”
Her first attack cost a lot of energy, but she would be able to use it again after a minute. Defeat her in one minute or die trying.
The Queen Mother struck out again, weaving her ice sword through the air. Each movement of the sword pulsated an icy shockwave like a sonic boom. Li Yun lunged to the right to avoid the blade-like shockwave, but one icy wave caught onto his left arm, severing his hand from the rotator cuff joint.
Li Yun screamed. Blood seeped into his t-shirt and dripped onto the grassy field. He clenched the remaining sleeve, cleanly cut without fringes, and tightened it around the exposed flesh and bone. His jaw tightened as he breathed in slowly in an attempt to steady the chaotic drumming of his heartbeat. It wasn’t the first time a limb or two was severed, but it was still painful.
From underneath Li Yun’s jacket, poisonous needles appeared and shot toward the Queen Mother.
She swung her sleeves in circles, causing the needles to scatter. “You’re still too weak.”
****
Li Yun gasped for air as though he had been buried in coffin. He lifted himself up from the sofa and shook off the unpleasant feeling of his 38th death in the compass world. The nerve in his arm pinched as though it was still reeling from the experience. Dream or no dream, his body was rather sensitive to spiritual deaths.
“Was there a way to beat her?” None of the items he had manifested from the real world to the compass world was of any use. From needles, blades, and even a gun, none of them were effective. “Maybe something else from the compass world with a higher stat stick than the ice sword?”
The world of the compass was self contained within a 100km x 100km field like a looping map. The creatures and plantlife behaved like living creatures, but their internal makeup was not of atoms and molecules, but of pure qi and shen. A creature that reached old age or destroyed, returned to dust and replaced by a new lifeform.
The key items were the exception to the rule. After every deaths, the items reseted to its original position. Unfortunately, the items were not on par with the Queen Mother’s ice blade. Li Yun needed time to comprehend the laws that operated the compass world– and time was one thing he had plenty off from within its field.