I continue watching the lecture from the comfort of my branch. Nothing too terribly interesting is going on inside the lecture hall; everything is about the nature of runes.

Specifically, runes are made up of different components: a base, an ink, spiritual and elemental properties, and, weirdly, runes. It takes me a minute to understand what Talisman master Hui is talking about, but it sort of makes sense when I spend time thinking about it.

The base would be the talisman ‘paper’ used to draw the runes on. Despite the fact that the base is always called talisman paper, it can actually be made of anything capable of acting as a medium to draw on. Theoretically, according to Talisman Master Hui, even air could be used as a base for drawing talismans.

I find that to be interesting trivia, so I look it up on another tab and find that he’s right. It’s just not theoretical. People not only can do things a lot more impressive than writing on air, they do so frequently. Good talisman masters tend to ignore things like ‘paper’ entirely and can even write on strands of soul energy or even on abstract concepts— how that works, I have no clue; it just sounds impressive.

The next component, ink, is just as broad when it comes to what can be used to draw. In fact, the only thing it doesn’t include is mundane ink. If someone was actually good at making talismans, they could even make soul talismans with soul energy as the base and the ink.

Spiritual and elemental properties are a very weird component. If what someone can use for the base and ink are infinitely broad, then spiritual and elemental properties dwarfs them both. Literally everything can be considered one or the other, often times both, and never neither unless you happen to mix things that you shouldn’t and they negate each other perfectly for some reason.

Finally, runes. Runes are, oddly, the least important and the most important part of talismans. Theoretically, so long as someone imagines meaning into a random drawing, knows enough about how it should interact with the world, and has the other components to make a talisman, anything can be a rune. It’s just that some runic languages are much, much better than others.

For example, Qiang City talismans are usually constructed using the Shi Codex of Runes which is derived from runic languages found in ruins throughout the region which are, in-turn, supposedly derived from other runic languages ad infinitum. As a result, talismans here are functional and do exactly what they are designed to do, but, according to the internet, they’d only be considered a Second-Grade runic language. To put it in context, a First-Grade runic language is little more than scribbles and a Second-Grade runic language are scribbles that have been washed by the river of time to scrape away some of their impurities.

On the other extreme of runic languages are those originating from Dao runes. Dao runes are, unsurprisingly, very potent at doing exactly what they are meant to do. The only problem is that what they are ‘meant’ to do is apparently just as broad as everything else surrounding talisman creations.

Just as there are Lesser and Greater Daos, there are different levels of understanding among them. Consequently, if you observed millions of people who were trying to understand the exact same Dao and had them write runic languages at different stages of their lives, then it is most likely that they’d look similar at the beginning, but toward the end they’d deviate so far from one another as to have few to no similarities between them.

For this reason, different inheritances of runic languages are seen to be more valuable, even among the best runic languages.

“It’s too bad the Shi Codex of Runes is so far behind everyone else,” I mutter while looking through some of the things that more advanced runic languages make possible.

Runes are not only useful for talismans, they are also often used as a component in arrays. With the help of high-grade runes, structures such as teleportation arrays, massive illusory fields, forcefield-like shields, and even floating palaces can be made. I’m not sure what the relative difficulties behind each of those things are, but they all sound incredibly impressive.

I even look up the teleportation stuff to see if it is something that can take me back to Earth, but I give up almost immediately when I realize the immensity of such a project. A ‘small’ teleportation array would cost me tens of thousands to millions of qi crystals in order to fund its creation— if I could find someone to make it or spend the time learning how to make it myself. That would allow me to travel hundreds of thousands of miles in minutes, but only if I could fuel it with even more high-grade qi crystals to allow for the teleportation to even take place.

What’s worse, the costs only go up exponentially with the distance you hope to travel, and that includes both the construction costs as well as the ‘fuel’ costs. For me to travel the however-many miles it is between here and Earth, I am pretty sure I would need more qi crystals than what actually exist. Probably.

“What bullshit,” I growl. It would be one thing if it was a nearly impossible task that I could delude myself into thinking possible, but I shouldn’t have even bothered to look up the teleportation stuff. It’s straight up impossible for me to return home that way.

I begin wondering how my family is doing and take out my photo to look at everyone. It’s weird, but I only recognize them when I’m looking at the photo. I can remember all the things I’ve done with them, the sound of their names, and pretty much everything else about them, but I can’t recall their faces unless I am looking directly at them.

I know they’re my family because I have all my memories of them, and I feel emotionally attached to them when I see the photo, but when I am not looking at the photo it is like a curtain is drawn between us; I know there is something on the other side, but I can’t make out anything useful.

The same thing is true for a lot of things I’m familiar with back on Earth. I know names and places, but the finer, more important details elude me.

I turn my attention back to the tab opened up to watch the lecture and nearly fall off my branch when I do. The girls Qiang Yu and Hong Cuirou and the Gang Feng guy are there! What’s more, they seem to be arguing about a pen of all things.

I’m not really sure what the significance of the pen is supposed to be, but Qiang Yu and Hong Cuirou both seem to be furious.

“You two lost, it is as simple at that,” Gang Feng says. “We had a fair match for all here to witness and now you want to renege on our agreement?”

“You ask for a fair challenge and supply yourself an advantage using a treasure! Where is the fairness in that?” Hong Cuirou shouts at Gang Feng accusingly.

Gang Feng scoffs at her and says, “Any cultivator knows that knowledge, wealth, and luck are the greatest means for success in this world. That my luck and wealth are great enough for me to have a spirit artifact can only mean that, in this life, I am destined to have greater advantages than either of you. That you cannot overcome my advantages with your knowledge and abilities just shows that you are both lacking.”

“You—!” Hong Cuirou hisses out before Qiang Yu lays her hand lightly upon her forearm. Hong Cuirou looks back and sees Qiang Yu shake her head, and all of the anger bubbling inside of her seems to disappear in an instant.

“We lost,” Qiang Yu says, her voice quiet, but it easily penetrates the entire room with its clarity. “For that, we will accept the consequences and leave. Fair well.”

With that, the two women turn around and begin walking out of the room, but before they can get far, Gang Feng says, “There is a way for the two of you to stay and listen to the lecture.”

I half expect Qiang Yu and Hong Cuirou to turn around to hear what he has to offer, so I mentally urge them to just ignore the guy and leave. To my shock and glee, they do one better.

“Pig,” they say as one, their voices loud and clear enough for everyone to hear. What’s better, they start giggling as they open the large doors leading out of the room while everyone behind them stares at Qiang Yu with wide eyes and open mouths.

I recall that Hong Cuirou has a tendency to insult people, but I don’t think I heard Qiang Yu insult anyone at the arena— even when she thought I was trying to peep at her, she was polite. And, judging by the expressions given by everyone else, they hadn’t heard her insult anyone before, either.

From the look on Gang Feng’s face, he is just as shocked as them. The only difference is that he has another emotion clearly written on his face: rage.

“Awkward,” I chuckle as I close the tab. I’d been on the receiving end of rejection a couple times, and it felt bad, but I’d never been rejected in such a public setting. And, I’d never been rejected by insult before… even if their insult was pretty juvenile. If not for the fact that Gang Feng is fucked in the head and a terrible person, I might even feel bad for him.

Unfortunately, I don’t know what to do now. I’m pretty sure that the lecture is over. Or, if not, then it will be pretty awkward in there for quite a while and I don’t feel like watching somebody else’s drama.

So, I lay back on my tree’s branch and consider what to do next.

The largest part of me wants to go back to the house and continue cultivating, but I also want to accomplish something, anything really, before I return. I don’t really have high standards for what I accomplish, I just want to successfully do something that I set out to do.

I think about what I can possibly do here, preferably something I can’t easily do with the Omega Browser, and realize that my options are pretty limited. Outside of the Martial Hall and the arena, there’s nothing that I’m too interested in right now. At least, not anything that wouldn’t take me forever to go to.

It would be nice to go to the Golden Sun Auction House to see what it’s like in person, but I don’t have anything to sell and I don’t have enough money to buy anything that I really want, so there’s no point. Plus, the Golden Sun Auction House is located in a different area of the Inner City from the Martial Hall. I could go there, but it would be an all-day kind of trip.

“Maybe I can buy stuff to make more talismans?” I wonder aloud, curious whether or not making talismans would be a practical decision.

Despite the fact that I don’t really want to, I am pretty well-suited towards being a talisman master. And, while I don’t intend to make it my actual job, it could make me some money in the short-term. Nowhere near as much as pills or cultivation manuals could, that’s for certain, but possibly enough for some immediate expendable income geared toward cultivation resources.

All of the things that could help me with my cultivation are a bit too expensive for me right now. Outside of regular weapons, which I don’t really want because I don’t want to fight anyone— and I don’t see the point of a sword when I can make fireballs—, the most affordable things are the kind that would probably do more harm than good; things like poor-quality medicinal pills and unrefined plants.

Materials to make talismans, on the other hand, are actually affordable. In addition, they might help me get better at manipulating my soul energy so I’m doing more than just wasting ink and paper. Sure, I’m making progress with what I’ve been doing so far, but it’s hard and discouraging work when ninety percent of the time I’m just making a mess.

“Dammit, I specifically didn’t want to focus on learning how to write a bunch of things, though.” I sigh, trying to figure out a way to balance out the talisman thing with my hesitancy to put too much effort into them while also trying to decide whether the potential profit from making talismans would even be worth it.

I look up some of the most common talismans sold in Qiang City while paying close attention to the ones that sell the best and look like they would be reasonable to draw. What I find is actually pretty encouraging because talismans like ‘Cascading Fire Spears’ and ‘Three-Layered Oak Shield’ both look to be very common talismans but they are also in high demand and seem like they can make a reasonable amount of profit.

To make sure, I search for spreadsheets online and open one up to input all of the information I find on each of the talisman’s ingredients and potential sale’s value. In the end, I find that, as long as I don’t mess up too badly, maybe screwing up a talisman here and there, I could buy the ingredients to make a dozen talismans for around ten small gold coins. If I could successfully make ten talismans out of those ingredients, I would have made a profit of four small gold coins.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Realistically, I only need to make nine talismans to profit. But, if I take my time and make sure I do things correctly, I could maximize my profit and get a different type of soul training in all at once.

“Okay, so making talismans will actually be a pretty reliable way of making money as long as I don’t screw around…” I mutter, my desire not to overburden myself with more things to focus on quickly being overtaken by my desire for money and a less boring way of training.

“Fuck it,” I declare. “Physician Bing won’t be helping me with any more money this month and there’s no way in hell I’m going to be ready to make manuals or high-quality pills in the immediate future, so let’s do it.”

I sit up and look at the ground before realizing how high I climbed. Judging by the distance, real high. While I wouldn’t say I’m several stories up or anything, I am definitely at least twenty feet up in the air right now.

“Oh man,” I whisper, feeling a crawling go up my spine. “I really got better at climbing.”

I remember that I used to enjoy bouldering back on Earth, but that was just a casual thing I did with friends when we could. We didn’t really have any mountains nearby, so we could only go when someone managed to beg a car from our parents. While I was never any good at it, I could at least claim to not completely suck.

But I was never ‘climb real high without realizing it’ kinda good.

“I should be fine jumping off, right?” I ask myself, not entirely certain whether I’m right or not. I’m pretty sure I’ve read somewhere that people can just drop twenty feet and, if they land right and distribute their weight properly, they probably won’t be injured.

And that’s without cultivation.

I take another look down at the ground and search for ‘how to fly, human cultivators’.

The first result is a webpage with a video that explains a decent bit about flight. Unlike the video about writing, this one is a video of a young woman explaining things to a classroom full of other young women. She seems to be fairly regal, but I’d be hard-pressed to call her a particularly attractive woman despite her beauty just due to her strange way of comporting herself among others. She almost seems as though she’s talking to air rather than people.

‘Flight is, perhaps, the single most unifying desire of all cultivators, regardless of our origins, flight is something that must be striven toward. It requires a greater degree of comprehension into the rules of the universe around us. One must be willing to attune themself with the world to comprehend the waxing and waning of the qi surrounding them.

For mortals, they find themselves able to fly at the Mortal Gathering Realm or, if they are skilled, at the peak of the Mortal Core Realm. While this may seem fortuitous, it also means that they have a lower benchmark for greatness.

For the denizens of the Lower Heavens, they find themselves able to fly at the Mortal Fusing Realm or Elemental Convergence Realm. For mortals in the Lower Heavens, flight is a result of training and understanding. While they are beneath us when it comes to quality, they should be commended for their efforts.

For those of us in the Transcendent Heavens, it is sometimes difficult to fly even when we’ve reached or even surpassed the Elemental Convergence Realm. This just shows that we must work harder at understanding the world around us than those whose fates we can inadvertently alter with our presence.

It is through this information that we can see that the Hea—‘

I pause the video because I find her to be rambling. She basically just said I can’t fly yet, and the rest was useless information for me.

“What the fuck are the Lower Heavens and all that bullshit? Which one am I in?” I distinctly remember that one guy flying, but I don’t actually know what his realm was. I just know that he looked pretty strong.

Wanting to know how long it would take me to learn to fly, I look for some more information about my location.

“Oh, fuck yeah! Mortal Realm, baby!” I throw my fist up into the air. I can only imagine how much it must suck to be in a place called ‘the Transcendent Heavens’ and have to wait forever to fly. Sure, I’ll still have to wait forever, but my forever will be a shorter forever than their forever.

“Fuck,” I say. “I still can’t fly until I am stronger… is there any other way to fly? What about movement techniques? Can those do anything?”

I remember not only hearing about movement techniques from Physician Bing, but also, very briefly, seeing something about them when I was looking up information about everything else to do with cultivation.

I know that certain movement techniques go well with specific cultivation practices, so I frame my search around that as I search ‘Divine Dragon Ascension good movement techniques’.

Frustratingly, I am still left with millions of results.

“You’ve got to be fucking me! I was even specific!”

Not really sure how I should be refining my search further, I just click on the first webpage. It brings me directly to a directory for countless things. Looking at the title of the webpage, I see that it says ‘Divine Dragon Palace’.

“Huh,” I say quietly. “Is this Divine Dragon Palace similar to the Golden Sun Divine Palace?”

Curious, I open up another tab and search for the history of the Divine Dragon Palace.

“Well, that sucks,” I say immediately after looking at the first webpage about the Divine Dragon Palace’s history. To put it bluntly, that place is dead and gone and has been for a very, very long time. Weirdly enough, they bit the dust just like the Dao Guru guy did: fighting in the Eternal Devil Chasm.

“How many people have died in the Eternal Devil Chasm?” I ask myself while searching for the information online.

“Jesus fuck!” I gasp, shocked at the results.

The Eternal Devil Chasm really lives up to its name! Over its, very literal, eternity of existence, just the list of the organizations that perished there is large enough to need new numbers made in order to adequately express it.

“Yeah, fuck all of that!” I shake my head. “I’m going back to learning how to fly.”

I switch back to the Divine Dragon Palace website and begin searching for anything that has to do with movement techniques. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I guess, I find a lot of answers.

“What’s the best one, though?” I grumble, frustrated with all the work I’m doing to get off a tree. I should have just jumped!

After a few minutes of searching, I find one that looks really good called ‘Clashing Waves, Rising Tides’. It would allow me to submerge myself in water to fly through the air like a water tornado, but it would require me to be in the Mortal Fusing Realm. So I look for another one.

Dozens, possibly even hundreds of movement techniques completely useless to me are displayed on the Omega Browser one-by-one before I finally find a good one that I might be able to work with. It’s called ‘Veiled Step’. It seems reasonably cool because it is supposed to let me shroud myself in mist to quickly move around and, briefly, let me walk on the mist to attain something similar to flight.

The only caveat to using it is that it requires someone to have access to both fire and water qi. Technically, I’m in the clear as far as this goes, but I think it would be pretty dumb to declare two types of qi one day and then do something to subvert myself just a few hours later.

“Man, why can’t anything be easy? I should just go live in a forest or something so I don’t have to worry about people worrying about me.” I continue flipping through movement techniques, but the ones that sound cool have different types of qi that I don’t have, like ice or lightning— both of which I now want—, types of qi I’m not ‘supposed’ to have, or they require me to be stronger than I am.

At a loss, I consider whether I should just use the Heaven’s Gaze hand sign again. It would definitely get me exactly what I want, but I don’t know if it would really be worth it. I’m not freaking out right now, and I’m relatively safe, so I don’t really feel the need to immediately improve myself. I just got wrapped up in the thought of flying.

“Hmm… maybe later. If I can’t find anything good, then I’ll do it, but I’m not really in a rush right now.”

Looking up at the sky, I can see that the sun is beginning to set.

“Okay, maybe I’m in a tiny bit of a rush, but that’s probably my fault for wasting so much time.”

I sigh and say, “Guess I should just get down already,” before I look at the ground one more time and jump off the tree.

I’m not really surprised when I fall safely to the ground, but I am slightly surprised when I sink deep into the grass-covered dirt.

“Damn, have I gained some weight?” I ask myself as I look at the two small craters.

Just going from the amount of earth I displaced, maybe around a circle two inches deep and a foot in diameter, I am probably a bit heavier than before, but I can’t really tell how much. I’ve never really been into physics, so I don’t know how much of the displaced soil is my weight and how much is my velocity, but I do remember that I felt more dense when I was using earth qi. Since I already know that fire qi seems to be making me more tolerant to fire, maybe earth qi is making me heavier? Somehow?

“This is weird…”

Looking at the dirt, I decide that all I’m doing is wasting time because I’m not going to figure out anything right now. So, I flatten the displaced grass and soil as well I can with my feet and leave toward the nearest store I can buy talisman supplies at.

Thankfully, the store is only a few minutes away from the Martial Hall by walking— a normal person’s pace, not a cultivator’s. It’s a place fittingly called, though rather uninspiringly, Qiang City Talismans.

It has good reviews online and it has a large stock of everything I might need; plus, the second closest store is about fifteen miles away in the direction opposite my house.

When I get there, I see that it is like many of the other buildings in the Inner City: large, well-decorated, and needlessly spacious. Though, with relation to many of the other buildings, it is slightly more modest with its extravagance; that mostly just means it uses less gold in its decorations and more lacquered wood.

I pass the store’s outer walls, head through the courtyard, and walk directly into the central building itself.

Inside, the building maintains its more-modest demonstration of extravagance. The walls and floors are nice, polished wood, the display cases throughout the room are made of glass, wood, and functional metals like bronze, and the shopkeeper is a nicely dressed guy wearing brown robes.

He looks very clean and orderly; not unlike what most doctors back on Earth look like. The only thing is that he lacks the overly-boisterous, hyper-consideration that most doctors I’ve been to have. Instead, his expression makes him seem like he’d been through the ringer more than his fair-share of times and is only holding on to appearances due to habit.

His eyes are the next best thing to glassy. But, despite that, he is still alert and attentive as his gaze locks on to me when I come through the doors.

“How’s it going?” I call out to him.

He ignores my greeting and instead says, “You may not use your spiritual awareness inside this store. Ignore this warning and you will be expelled.”

I blink in surprise. He doesn’t seem overly rude, just extremely blunt. I’m not offended in any way, but I do find it a little weird that someone who obviously doesn’t want to be here is running a shop.

“Uh, okay. No problem,” I say as I close my Dragon’s Third Eye for what has to be the second or third time since I got it.

The sensation as it closes is completely off-putting. It feels as though part of the world goes dark in front of me, leaving a hazy afterimage where the once-ever-present qi once was. This much I definitely don’t like.

My mind has a hard time adjusting to the apparent lack of qi in the air. I am still absorbing it perfectly fine, but it feels as though I just walked into a desert.

For a moment, it is all I can do to stand still and shake my head to try and get rid of the strange sense of loss that tickles my psyche.

“What’s wrong with you?” The guy asks me.

“Huh?” I respond before putting his words together in my mind. “Oh, uh… nothing really. Just…” I pause for a second, not really certain how I should phrase things. “I always use my spiritual awareness, I guess, so it’s weird not using it.”

I don’t think I lied, but I’m also pretty sure I didn’t tell the truth. From what I know, spiritual awareness is supposed to be an active thing. In other words, you cover something with your spiritual awareness and understand it with your non-physical senses. I’m pretty sure the Dragon’s Third Eye has something to do with my spiritual awareness, but it shouldn’t be my spiritual awareness.

Heck, I don’t think I’ve even tried using my spiritual awareness outside of my body.

He doesn’t bother saying anything else, choosing instead to ignore my presence as he stands in the back of the room, unnaturally alert.

When I get my thoughts back in order I begin to look around the room more closely. I know exactly what I’m looking for and, supposedly, the store has everything I need. The only problem is that I don’t really know whether I’m supposed to ask the guy for help. He seems distinctly like a very unaccommodating sort of person.

Consequently, I end up looking through the room on my own.

Fortunately, I have names of things I need. Unfortunately, very few items actually have cards describing what they are. It seems as though the people who normally shop here know exactly what it is they are looking for on-sight. I just wish I was one of those people.

For every item I’m looking for, I have to search for its name online, find pictures of it, and then see whether or not that particular picture looks like something in front of me. It works, sort of, but I’m also left slightly irritated by the fact that certain items look almost identical to one another.

There’s one plant that I really need that I’m supposed to mix with the blood of a Wood Tortoise after its been crushed into a powder. The problem is that there are several powders that look almost entirely identical.

I end up looking online for ways to distinguish one type of powder from another and I find that I’m supposed to be looking at their coloration, considering their texture, examining them for traces of foreign materials, and feeling how they interact with the qi around them.

Because I need powdered Iron Oak Bark, I need to be looking for something brown with traces of orange flecks in it. It should look and feel gritty despite being a powder as the metallic nature of powdered wood should make it come together in small clumps. While I can’t actually feel it behind the case, I can see one type of powder that matches the description I’m looking for.

Now, I just need to see whether it interacts favorably with metal and wood qi. The only issue is that I’m not certain whether I’m allowed to do that inside. So I ask.

“Hey, am I allowed to see how the powders interact with my qi?”

The guy looks at me for a few seconds before saying, “So long as you are not doing anything improper.”

“Awesome, thanks!” I reply.

I immediately turn back around and cast out a small strand of my qi as a feeler. It easily penetrates the case guarding the powder as I poke and prod what I’m assuming is the powdered Iron Oak Bark.

Though I am careful to avoid trying to absorb any of the qi I’m certain is inside the powder, I am able to feel a sort of resonance coming from the interaction between the powder and my own qi. Most importantly, it is the wood and metal elements that should, hopefully, distinguish this powder from anything else that looks similar to it.

‘Great, just five more ingredients to go!’ I sigh internally, not looking forward to searching through the rest of these things. Though, thankfully, two of those ingredients are vicious beast blood which don’t appear to be out right now. I’m pretty sure that means that I’ll have an actual reason to ask the quiet shopkeep to do something for me once I find the rest of what I need.