23. Reincarnator!
Within the Raging River sects meeting hall, all 51 elders were present and along with the sect master were watching a formation screen made by elder Gui. On this formation screen Naath was currently counting out the profits his bar had made him on the first day. As they watched the sect master brow twitched slightly and one of the financial elder hollered.
“He opened a bar?! I mean okay, fine he can make some merit points and money this way but… Did we seriously overhaul the sects entire financial management model for him to sell some new form of alcohol?! Am I the only one who this this is fucking ridiculous?!”
One of the lower ranked elders who managed and kept an eye on the disciples faction also spoke up.
“I have to agree with elder Pa Here. He wants to make a name for his faction by…. By selling alcohol? It’s just ridiculous! With the latent talent he’s shown he should be directly crushing the other factions and claiming his place in the way cultivators have always done!”
Several other elders also began to murmur and hen voice their agreement to this opinion, though in relation to the various things they managed.
“Now now, everyone, I’m sure Naath’s grand plan is more than just selling some booze to make a profit. While that’s said, I don’t disagree with you all, this is not what we reformed the sects entire internal structure to see. I’ll go and have a word with him-.”
The sect master didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence as something on the formation screen caught his attention. On the screen, Naath was gathering the disciples of the True Void Faction and although the formation screen couldn’t project sound, elder Gui could conveniently read lips and was adding subtitles. According to these subtitles, Naath was telling everyone to close the bar for the day and meet him outside of his own residence. This drew the eyes of all of the other elders as well and nobody noticed when the sect master glanced at Elder Gui, nodded, and sat back down.
On the screen the entire True Void Faction was gathering in front of Naath’s residence then spoke up.
“Okay everyone, now that the coast is clear and it’s only us members of the True Void Faction left I can get down to business. Sigh, there is no polite, kind or soft way for me to say this so I will just say it. Every single one of you has been cultivating wrongly this entire time.”
“I’ll say it again, everyone here has been cultivating wrong this entire time. Thankfully, none of you are at the blood cleansing level so it can be undone easily enough. It will be excruciatingly painful though. I will need to remove all of your cultivations and this means essentially destroying all of your bones. But before that I need to explain how you all have been cultivating wrong for you to understand. When you all cultivate to break through to the next stage of bone hardening you have been pulling in energy and letting it build until your bones crack and break and then reform yes?
Well, that's wrong, your all missing a step. When the energy is on the cusp of overwhelming your bones and breaking them apart you need to take control over this energy and compress it to the absolute limit of what you can do into the very marrow of your bones. Then, you need to pull in more energy to let it build again and then compress it again and repeat this as many times as you can possibly manage. Eventually even compressed, the energy will have so much area that your bones will still break apart and reform advancing you to the next level. If you do it this way, however, you all will have vastly larger energy reserves, your bones will almost certainly turn to powder and reform more purely.
As you cultivate like this the more talented of you will be able to eventually form an elemental body. An elemental body is special, it will allow a much greater degree of control over your cultivated element and even a degree of immunity to your own element and other abilities related to the element but almost completely unique to each individual person. Of course nothing in the world is free, when you do cultivate this way the pain is unbelievable! The more compressions you can achieve, the greater your talent is considered to be but at the same time the greater the pain.
I also wanted to take this opportunity to offer some of you a cultivation method, From my understanding it is considered as a 3 gold star method. If any of you cultivate the wind element then this method is absolutely priceless and perfect for you. I am confident that there is nowhere on this planet where any of you will ever come into contact with a method of similar quality. So, any question?”
One of the members of the True Void Faction raised her hand, waiting to be called on. When Naath nodded to her she asked.
“Faction leader, can those of us who had no choice in what element we cultivated start over with element of our own choice this time?”
One of the members of the True Void Faction raised her hand, waiting to be called on. When Naath nodded to her she asked.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
“Faction leader, can those of us who had no choice in our cultivation elements start over with a new one if you undo our cultivations?”
Naath blanked out for a second as a thought occurred to him.
“Wait, don’t tell me, most of you cultivate your current element not because you want to but because it’s the only cultivation method you have? If so raise your hand!”
After Naath said this, almost everyones hands went up with the exception of three people. The only three people who had cultivated their desired elements were Baal, Zeke, and a girl named Stella. Baal cultivated in the wind element, Zeke in the earth element, and Stella in the rare light element. Upon seeing the raised hands, Naath pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a long low groan.
“Ughhhhhhhh, King was right this world is trash! Complete and utter trash! Sigh. Okay everyone, ignore that outburst please. Fine, fine, okay, so almost none of you cultivate an element that you want to cultivate. For heavens sake, I want to throttle the ancestors of this world! Okay, everyone What we will do then is I want everyone to write down their name in a book and the element you want to cultivate next to it. Keep this next part an absolute secret, but I can create cultivation techniques rather easily, the whirlwind arts in fact are my own creation.
I will provide an excellent cultivation method for each and every element written down in that book and provide them to you all a month after I receive the book. Each of you will be able to cultivate the element of your choosing, but think long and hard, as resetting your cultivation is not something that should just casually be done. It can effect your foundation and make it harder and in fact even stop you from cultivating entirely if not done properly and carefully.”
After he finished speaking Naath took out a notebook he got from the sect market earlier and handed it to Zeke to handle getting everyones information. Rather, he tried to, Zeke was still in a stunned shock looking at Naath, even Baal was frozen stiff looking at Naath like he was a monster.
Back at the sects meeting hall every single elder and even the sect master were in the same state. They had first been absolutely giddy when Naath said he had a 3 gold star method to provide to people and were celebrating. When Naath told the crowd of disciples that he was the one to make the method and that he could even make more with relative ease they all froze in place. To everyone listening or watching these words hit like a ten ton sledgehammer against glass. It shattered their knowledge entirely! Normally only an old ancestor who had lived for 200 years or more would start to even remotely comprehend a new cultivation method for their own element.
This was for a person who had spent centuries on their own individual element, going through countless difficulties to figure out the intricacies to make it. But what about Naath? He as far as everyone knew had a devour body, he didn’t even need to use any elemental cultivation method. To them he was by default a cultivation genius that didn’t even need to actively cultivate to advance! Yet he said he made a 3 gold star wind element cultivation method?! He looked to them like he was only a child still, barely even a pre-teen! He could at this age make gold star cultivation methods for other elements that he barely interacted with?!
Suddenly one of the True Void Faction disciples had a thought pop into their minds, they had read about something in their families ancient library records once. They spoke out completely involuntarily.
“R-reincarnator?”
The disciple didn’t say it loudly, in fact it was barely more than a whisper but in the atmosphere where everyone was frozen and dead silent it sounded like a thunderclap. Hearing this one word Naath unconsciously stiffened his body as this was completely unexpected. He absolutely never expected to hear someone mention that word in the current situation. Seeing Naath stiffen even only slightly while everyones eyes were glued to him a bombshell seemed to have been dropped.
Simultaneously after this word was spoken in a barely audible whisper every single person let out a breath of relief and their body's seemed to melt into their various seats. Those who were standing crumpled to the ground as their legs finally gave out from under them from pure relief. Baal was the first to gain his composure enough to speak up, he stood on shaky legs and his voice was quivering too.
“M-martial b-brother Naath, a-are you a reincarnator? Please tell me you’re a reincarnator!”
Hearing this Naath was completely and utterly lost.
“Are you saying it’s not uncommon here for a reincarnator to appear?”
Hearing this question basically confirmed what Baal had asked. So Baal smiled and felt an indescribable sense of relief wash over his body as he spoke.
“Well, yes and no. Reincarnators are rare, exceedingly rare. Especially because when one appears in this world they tend to quickly rise like a reverse meteor both metaphorically and literally. They all leave this planet very, very quickly, every time one shows up they form a small group and lead them all to seem like gods to the rest of us and then they leave. They never leave behind any information or techniques to help progress the world, they just leave legends. Martial brother, if you are one, why did you try to hide it?”
“Well… Thats… Complicated. I am a reincarnator, yes I can tell you all that much. The world I was from last though did not believe in such a thing and people who claimed as such were swiftly written off as completely mad. That was the first world I was ever born to so I had no idea how other places would react to the matter.”
“They didn’t believe in reincarnation?! That might as well be the same as saying they didn’t believe in martial energy or cultivation!”
When one of the random disciples shouted this an odd look showed up on Naaths face. When everyone saw this they were dumbstruck again, obviously that disciple had hit the nail on the head! Seeing this everyone pressured Naath to tell them about his old world, they completely forgot that he was strong enough to easily shut them all up. Right now their curiosity completely overwhelmed them!
The elders watching back in the meeting hall were just plain dumbstruck and at this point were watching on completely fascinated yet also numb to surprise. In fact, elder Gui had pulled out something that could only be compared to popcorn as he sat down and watched with deep fascination.
With all of the True Void Faction’s disciples pressuring him and looking at him with looks of curiosity Naath eventually broke down and started to tell them about Earth.