Haah - haah - haah - haah - gulk.
Fk... Glm?
No. Elmntl...
Frigging earth elemental!
Fucking new world! Fucking System with useless rolls! Fucking useless multiverse chat! Fucking wolves!
And now a frigging earth elemental next to a so-convenient cave, with who-knows-what inside!!!
All that's missing is to pick up Singing, Triple Jump, and turn it into an impromptu musical about how absolutely shitty everything is!
I decided not to waste any more time and entered the chat.
➖ ➖ ➖ ➖ ➖ ➖ ➖ ➖ ➖ ➖
⚜️Max⚜️ I'm alive.
🔮Bella🔮 You are alive! I was so worried!
⚜️Max⚜️ I began running. Not long after, I spotted two wolves chasing me.
After I climbed up a hill, I noticed a cave nearby, and an earth elemental (a slow-moving creature made of piled rocks) standing close to it.
⚜️Max⚜️ I dashed into the cave, and the elemental, being larger than the entrance, blocked cave entrance from wolves.
YES, I KNOW this is very strange. Stupid. Unnatural. And this kind of blatant narrativity scares me even more than the wolves did.
But it is what it is. I have no idea how long the elemental will stay at the entrance. I'm taking Wooing.
{{{ Skills, wooing. Nothing? No knowledge, no procedural memory.
I really took it? Yes, I lost the ability to open Skills choice menu...
Then, what, it's really x5 talent?
Or not? What else could it possibly be? Some apprentice-level of intuition? x5 more than it was? Some sort of auto-correction?
Skills menu also don't open, only Abilities one with Iron Limbs card and its description. Let's test it a little. }}}
❄️Mei❄️ This situation reminds me of the tales of Divine Will. Where luck and misfortune are so intertwined they’re hard to tell apart.
{{{ Just great! The second most hated trope after "it was just a dream." }}}
⚜️Max⚜️I took the Wooing, but nothing seems different at all.▪️▪️▪️💬Bella: I'll do a quick test, if it's alright with you.
🔮Bella🔮▪️▪️▪️💬Max: If such test will be appropriate, I don't mind.
⚜️Max⚜️▪️▪️▪️💬Bella: Your name is so lovely. Like chimes of tiny bells. Ding-dong-Bella.
⚜️Max⚜️ Is it working?
🔮Bella🔮▪️▪️▪️💬Max: If I should feel embarrassed, then yes.
⚜️Max⚜️ The first prototypes are always like this."Your name is so lovely. Like chimes of tiny bells in the wind. Ding-Dong-Bell, Ding-Dong... Bella!"Does this feel better?
🔮Bella🔮 I guess so?
⚜️Max⚜️ By what percentage?
🔮Bella🔮 What?
⚜️Max⚜️ How much better is it than before? I'm trying to check if the skill has improved my intuition and learning rate.
🔮Bella🔮 I am not sure. A little?
⚜️Max⚜️ "Your name is so lovely. Like chimes of bridal bells in the wind. Ding-Dong-Bell, Ding-Dong... Bella!"
And now?
🔮Bella🔮 This is also a little better.
{{{Stable growth! Not bad!}}}
⚜️Max⚜️ What exactly better, "bridal", the combo, or the punchline?
🔮Bella🔮 Bridal? Perhaps. I'm not sure. It's too much? What do you mean about the combination? Two ding-dong? Then, I don't like it. And, I think, ending too.
⚜️Max⚜️ What would you change?
🔮Bella🔮 I think "I like your name" is enough.
{{{
Hmm... I like your name?
I don't get it.
Is it because of its ambiguity? Because anyone can interpret it in their own way? Or it's about versatility? Isn't such icebreakers should be interested, funny, and engaging?
Darling, you are so lovely that my beauty integer underflow.
Hi, can I invite you to sax night? Do-Do-Dee-Wee-Doo... Do-Do-Dee-Wee-DaaaAaa...
Have you ever heard of people who find pleasure mostly in their partner's pleasure? I'm their representative.
Hey, I lost my prepaid ticket for a few hours of asexual fun in public places. Have you seen it by any chance?
Fuck, but how can I determine what is good or bad with such a small statistical sample as Bella?
For now, let's forget about wooing.
All that remains...
Should I mention the Steel Limbs card? It's the first thing I have that they will undoubtedly want to receive.
No, I don't know if the card is returnable. I should keep it as a last resort and only for the second ability card.
But would I have time for this?
Perhaps. Wolves are... small? Likely young. I don't think if I run into darkness and prove that my skin isn't what they expect, they would keep attacking no matter what.
Skin...
I cautiously checked my skin by touch, initially finding no differences from how it was before I took Iron Limbs.
But then I hardly pressed down my nail to skin and dragged it across my arm.
If this had happened before, I would have undoubtedly felt sharp pain from damaged skin. This time, however, as my nail glided over my skin, I felt nothing but a slight tickling sensation from my still normal hand's hair.
Seeing that the skill worked, and worked quite well, I decided to postpone revealing the card function. At least for now, until I get to know the girls better and experiment with the abilities menu.
}}}
⚜️Max⚜️ I'm not sure exactly what I gained from the Wooing, but I don't think I have much time for experiments. So, it really comes down to trying to earn exchange points either by selling my clothes or listing all knowledge that might be useful to you.
🌟Astra🌟 Sup. What did I miss? Anyway. ▪️▪️▪️💬Max: It dawned on me, how do we know that exchange points come from YOU providing services to US, and not from US providing them to YOU? Just because we cannot send you items?
Shipping does not equal services!
But, what kind of services can we possibly offer you via chat?
Then it hit me: Wait! We can send photos! And what kind of photos do guys want to receive from girls the most?
No, not those types of photo, pervert!
Better!
How can there be something better?
Ta da!
❄️Mei❄️▪️▪️▪️💬Astra: Where did you get the picture of demon beasts? Are you a demon beast yourself?
🌟Astra🌟▪️▪️▪️💬Max: Did this rise your progress bar?
⚜️Max⚜️Multiverse Service System (roll 10❖; ⇪50❖) Astra: 0|10Still thanks, they are beautiful. Also, hope this is voluntary.
🌟Astra🌟 Hmm. And the pump is working, right? In the usual direction.Voluntary? LoL, they're rather greedy sorts, so now I owe them a little more than before. But yes, we kinda friends.
🔮Bella🔮 Astra is a beastkin? Now everything makes sense!▪️▪️▪️💬How can you thank her for such perversion!
⚜️Max⚜️ Yes, my pump is working. In the usual direction.▪️▪️▪️💬Bella: They are cute. And sexualization is a normal defense reaction to high stress. The bigger the risk - the more humans want and appreciate anything sexual.
🌟Astra🌟 I'm not a "demonic beast" or "beastkin" for you, two-eared racists!
❄️Mei❄️▪️▪️▪️💬Max: Demon beasts are despised not for their looks but for their wicked nature. It's highly inadvisable to trust anything they say.
🔮Bella🔮▪️▪️▪️💬Max: But they aren't humans! They are beasts that driven by feral nature!▪️▪️▪️💬Mei: In your world as well? We don't call them demons, that's too much honor for such low-blooded creatures and blood-stealers.
🌟Astra🌟 Why did you attack me, nya? What did I do to you, nya? ▪️▪️▪️💬Max: Admin, nya, save me, nya!
⚜️Max⚜️ I think this is a misunderstanding, Astra might look like your "demon beasts" or "beastkin" but she is from a different world. Twice. Also, did any of you notice something strange in the picture?▪️▪️▪️💬Bella: Visually, they're almost indistinguishable from humans. And more importantly - just look at picture, there are a lot of items which indicate a high aesthetic and cultural level of their society.
❄️Mei❄️▪️▪️▪️💬Max: She behaves exactly as monks describe demon beasts behavior, this cannot be a coincidence.
🔮Bella🔮 ▪️▪️▪️💬Mei: Fully agree.▪️▪️▪️💬Max: Did you look at what she said when you were absent?
🌟Astra🌟▪️▪️▪️💬Bella: I'm Astra.
I want a big juicy burger.
You shouldn't call the warden because you don't have any proof that something is wrong.
Here your "something like that."
Thanks, sweetie!
▪️▪️▪️💬Mei: Let me guess, you're very beautiful, with pale skin and long hair the color of snow or night?
Enormous talent? Woman's jealousy? Man's adoration? Interest of elders? A little chill in your limbs?
Congratulations! You are dying!
No. Not right, we all sorta dying... Congratulations! You are dying very-very fast!
But I wouldn't recommend telling anyone about this, otherwise good guys will staff you by sausages, and bad guys will turn you into a soup.
Hell Hath No Fury Like a Furry Scorned, B's, nya.
➖ ➖ ➖ ➖ ➖ ➖ ➖ ➖ ➖ ➖
{{{ aaaaaaAAAAAAAAAASTRA!!!!
This... All of this... It was so foolish that it felt more like a cliffhanger from a cheap isekai story than something at least somehow believable.
Like typical protagonist's "brilliant idea" introduced at the end of one chapter, explained at the start of the second. But due to its contradictions, soon doomed to be forgotten entirely.
What. The. Fuck. Nya?!
For whom? Bella and Mei don't understand, and for me it's how old people speak about old things!
What is she even thinking? Does she think at all?
Suddenly I saw a big snowflake icon. Mei’s invitation to a private chat. I took a deep breath and mentally prepared for the dreaded conversation with, let’s be honest, the most problematic client.
Fucking Astra!
}}}
▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ Mei ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰
Mei didn't know what to think about the last few hours of her life.
Before them, everything had been very simple.
Wait for brother.
Eat. Sleep.
Practice the White Lily Nutrition Breath Method, Gale Steps, and the Moonlight Division Art.
Once every couple of months, escort Luo Bai, and sometimes other herbalists, to Ghost Mountain. Looking for possible Cho Mo machinations.
Occasionally read books. Because, as her brother liked to say, "An ignorance mean failure. Failure for a cultivator mean death."
Then, suddenly, appeared something else. Something right in her head, and with other people (?).
Something so strange that she still couldn't understand what it was.
A test from an elder? A core disciple's plot? A blessing? A curse?
A genuine path to other realms, like the ones her brother used to read about before runaway?
Mei Lin had no way of knowing which it was, so none of it truly mattered, including supposed "opportunities of the chat."
What really mattered right now - first in her life hints about her strange predicament.
Hints that she may have lost only a few hours after receiving them.
Mei Lin put the knife down on the table and looked at the cut.
Shallow. Half a hour for healing. Not important. She thought, and refocused on the chat.
Unwilling to interfere at the critical moment, she did what she always did in such situations: she waited for certainties.
Soon, "Max" (?) wrote that he was alive.
Mei Lin didn't want to waste a single moment.
If he had escaped, then the wolves (?) might return, and she wouldn't receive important answers.
If he'd battled wolves, he was likely injured, which also endangered the answers she needed.
But, as usual, she chose to trust her brother's words and waited even more. For something resembling the "right opportunity."
Simultaneously repenting in her mind related brother's instructions.
"You cannot demand anything from people with unknown backgrounds and capabilities."
"People should be treated like cats. You cannot force a cat - it must come to you on its own."
"Don't ever let others see that you need anything."
Feeling as each line echoed inside her by blend of hollowness and warmth.
Soon it became apparent that "Astra" (?) is a demonic beast, or something very close to one. Rendering everything said by her (?) about Mei's predicament (?) even more dubious.
Then the demonic beast (?) stated that Mei is dying (?).
Forcing her to immediately demand answers from Max, by his (?) own admission, main reason of such uninvited chaos which already brought her so many unpleasant emotions.
Over the last few hours she'd experienced them more frequently than she had in a long while.
Their intensity was less than during the worst days of struggle for hierarchical rank in the early months of her discipleship. More so in comparison with the time of the runaway and her separation from brother.
However, all those events had been beyond her control.
When right now she endured them by her own volition.
Mei resolved that, after she obtained her answers from "Max" (?), she would not participate in any further communication until the "others" (?) in the "chat" proved proofs of their (?) practical values to her.
➖ ❄️ ➖ ❄️ ➖ ❄️ ➖ ❄️ ➖ ❄️ ➖
❄️Mei❄️ I need answers. Now.
⚜️Max⚜️ Of course. However, I should say right away that I only know things in broad strokes, still, I'll try to tell everything I know.
⚜️Max⚜️ Your icon is a snowflake. In cultivation novels from my world, there's a popular female archetype associated with snow and cold.
A beautiful "jade beauty" with pale complexion and with an excess of Yin - "Yin Physique."
Such "Yin Physique" allows them to cultivate quickly, but at the cost of a kind of "slow freezing."
It's not an illness, rather their very nature.
Which at first manifests as cold in the limbs. Then as detachment and emotional numbness. And finally, as a complete "freezing."
Typically, many years or decades pass between these stages, so if you have similar symptoms, we still have plenty of time to stop them or even reverse them.
{{{
"It's not an illness, rather their very nature."
In her life Mei could name very few things that had ever frightened her, and now that short list had gained another entry.
Although what Max (?) described didn't fully match the numbness and tingling in her limbs, nor the occasional daytime chills, with addition of Astra's (?) "a little chill in your limbs", deep inside Mei knew - Max (?) and Astra (?) was speaking exactly about her predicament.
Thankfully, the burning hollow in her chest became lighter when she read the last sentences of the Max (?) message.
}}}
❄️Mei❄️ How exactly can it be stopped and reversed?
{{{ Even suspecting from Max's previous actions that he was already writing about what she asked right now, Mai decided leave nothing to chance.
And begun await.
Feeling another bad emotion, chagrin. Chagrin at a mortal's slowness. }}}
⚜️Max⚜️ This is a somewhat controversial topic, so I apologize in advance.
In classic stories, there are 2 types of treatment.
First - by natural treasures. It's an unsustainable approach: each use of immensely rare treasures raises a woman's cultivation level, which in turn increases the quantity and potency of next treatment dose.
Second classic method of "treatment" - periodic sex with a man who possesses an equally rare Yang Physique (and therefore similar cultivation speed), or just have similar by potency... Yang energy? Yang part of Qi? Not sure about it. But Astra should know.
Logically, a cultivator at a higher stage also should possess more potent Yang, and therefore should be capable of such "treatment." Yet, I've never actually read about something like this.
From lore perspective, perhaps, because Yin Physique women fear that powerful cultivators use their Yin Physique for one-time advancement of their own cultivation. But from authors and readers perspectives, obviously because they wish that the "jade beauty" was saved through sex solely by stories' protagonist.
All mentioned above - "the classics."
Because such plots were repeated in almost every cultivation novel, audiences eventually grew tired of them, and the methods of treatment became more… unusual.
Like "treatment through women's assistance", or "compensating quality with an extreme quantity of sexual acts." Or "with help of not human beings." After all, in classic stories, protagonists often turned into dragons, and such transformation in no way reduced the efficiency of "treatment." So why should it be reduced in case of more potent fully draconian Yang?
In my first world, alongside cultivation novels, there were also popular "games" about cultivators. Something between board games, books, theater, and war‑games, but in form of complex and almost indistinguishable from reality illusions. That imitated such things as combat, alchemy, sect management, and so on.
In one of such game, Cultivation Simulator, one particular "strategy" was taken to utilitarian extremes. Because of both its efficiency and hilarity, it became well known even among people who had never played the game.
A Yin Physique offers superb cultivation speed but requires rare resources.
Natural Yang treasures - which require a lot of time to become potent.
Yang Physique - which is very rare and related to very ambitious and adventurous people.
And, as far as I understand, stable supply of powerful Yang creatures meat would be problematic.
So where does obtain a large quantity of, if I'm not wrong, biological form of Yang?
In medicine, male reproductive organs from animals are commonly used to enhance male potency - essentially to strengthen Yang attribute.
So, strategically, and much more morally than parts-harvesting, speaking, why not pave a direct path to divinity by… mass collection of renewable male essence? Biologically-aligned concentrate of Yang.
As cultivation and power increases, across increasingly more vast controllable territories.
Of course, it's just about game mechanics, but I promised to tell everything I know, so I tell all of it.
➖ ➖ ➖ ➖ ➖ ➖ ➖ ➖ ➖ ➖
Mei Lin was confused. She had expected to read about a rare technique, or about name of rare pill.
What she read instead… was strange.
And as she read, part of her feelings, also became very strange and utterly novel.
At first only a small part of feelings. Mei Lin quickly recognized confusion, joy, irritation. But also something oily, hot, and prickly.
Is this shame? she wondered.
Because of the mention of periodic sex?
Didn't it's typical for humans have sex?
Yes, less so for cultivators. But still normal.
Then why does her body say it's bad?
Of course, without brother's help, finding the right man would be difficult. And such "treatment" will take away noticeable part of her cultivation speed.
Yet if such a negligible price is all she has to pay to get rid of the intrusive sensations, it's unquestionably worth it.
Therefore, good. And shouldn't feel so much bad.
Or was it because of mention of "women's help", "quantity", and dragons?
If so, then her body just foolish.
Woman assistance? This is an obvious error. Perhaps about such feminine men like Shen Zichen.
Quantity of sex? Didn't a lot of normal sex is as normal as just normal sex?
Dragons? Dragons exists only in legends.
Hence, her body had no reason to feel bad about such things.
Mai again tried to better discern new emotion from the rest.
Or not bad? Mei pondered.
The new and slowly intensifying emotion was bad and not bad at the same time. Strange. Strange mean unpredictable - number 21 in the list of bad things, which meant she should have felt even worse.
Yet, she didn't.
Why?
Then she has begun read about strange game.
Agreeing that procuring of powerful beats meat is "problematic." Similar to natural treasures, powerful demonic beasts accumulate Qi very slowly, therefore very rare. But unlike natural treasures - they are very dangerous, and with orders of magnitude lesser assimilability of their meat.
Which is why her sect, and many others, instead of farms had only small hunting grounds with species whose rations didn't include the valuable herbs they essentially protected for the sects.
But such hunting grounds would be impossible for much more aggressive and destructive Yang creatures.
Then she began read further and suddenly Mei felt as if someone had slapped her few times and spat in her face.
She clenched her snow-white fists so hard they turned scarlet.
Ew! Disgusting!
Unlike proposed before, something like this was possible, therefore real proposition. The most disgusting proposition in her life!
Inexcusable. Even informing her that such foul things even possible. How will she ever forget this now?!
At first Mei wanted to close the chat and never open it again, but her brother would be upset by the missed opportunity.
Not wanting to speak to a such foul creature (list number 9; no, 8!) who had dared to insult her more than anything in her life, she had already decided to announce her departure from the chat before she received proper compensation...
Only to suddenly go still, and with amazement stare at her pinkish hands.
Shortly she received new Max's message.
⚜️Max⚜️ I HAVE TWO EXCHANGE POINTS! What do you have against wolves?