... am I actually strong?
That question hung over my head like clouds above London for a long while as we boarded the chariot and took to the sky. After all, that was no ordinary attack. Could it be that, unbeknownst to me, I've somehow turned this trash body into an extremely amazing one? Does that mean that I'm also the strongest in the group, finally?!
... yeah, no. I may be strong, but I'm definitely not the strongest. Nope.
Still, watching those flames consume everything in my vision was... well, it was as terrifying as it was exhilarating. It's one thing to have the capacity to kill a person swiftly, or to run around a battlefield like a bolt of lighting, but this was... different. That attack was more meant for a war rather than a fight. Having the capacity to kill one person versus having the capacity to level a fucking city... that's like the difference between a gun and a nuke.
Now, I'm not saying that Song of Hellfire is a nuke, far from it, but the idea behind it is similar. That was why it terrified me. I mean, I'm well past the point of feeling gut-wrenching guilt every time I kill a person, but what if I dropped that attack on a city?
Sheesh.
At the very least, I confirmed one thing: the art cannot be used casually. Not only was it extremely difficult to control, as I sincerely did not want for it to spread out that wide and far, but it was also extremely eye-catchy. And though our group's strength has gone sky-high, relatively speaking, I'd still prefer we weren't lightning houses just beckoning the entire world to find us.
It's probably best I use it the same way I would use that Reversal array--when everyone who would bear witness to it would also die bearing witness to it. Man. It's gotten so easy for my brain to conjure up thoughts that just don't feel right.
Haah.
The days soon enough began to blur. The same routine was established: fly for about twelve hours, land someplace to eat and for the kids to stretch and rest for a bit, usually just three to four hours, and back to the chariot and to the sky.
There was an explosion of messages like this, though:
[--your Disciple Xi Zhao has made major progress in comprehending Single Severance][Reward: 300CP]
Or,
[--your Disciple Wan Lan has made major strides in deepening her understanding of Surging Spirit Art][Reward: 250CP]
While none of the individual rewards offered a particularly high number of points (still a nuts amount considering that just a few years back, 100 was the most I could spend on an art), because they were so many of them, with each kid triggering them at least twice, in about two weeks I ended up earning around 10,000 points.
Ten. Thousand. Freakin'. Points.
A bit of regret welled up inside of me as this made it clear that the system was totally designed around me being a Sect Master, seated atop some mountain farming daily points off of thousands of my Disciples. Even if each of those Disciples yielded one tenth of the points my current kids do, the difference could easily be made up in numbers.
Alas, it wasn't meant to be.
Still, even with the windfall, I was ways away from paying off the debt. Which was also why I was checking my quests religiously, hoping for something with a reward of 1 million points to pop up.
It never did, of course; the quests themselves remained... average. Most of the rewards ranged between 3,000 points to 5,000. Were I not in debt, that would be more than respectable amounts. Even with the debt, completing a few would still make a sizeable dent. The issue was that they were utterly and completely scattered, and that there were literally none en route to our current destination.
Speaking of our destination, I reached into the depths of all my rings and summarized everything that I could sell that wouldn't cause me to be hunted down by the entire world. It was... surprisingly little, actually.
Mostly just low-level weapons, some talismans and pills, and just two low-Earth arts that I didn't make and didn't seem to have a strong association with any one power. Even if I'm not the greatest judge of the economy in this world, I don't see all of this selling for more than 100,000 mid-grade stones, at best. I could pull out some of the good stuff and risk it, but even if I'm desperate for stones, I'd much rather just make an art and sell it rather than risk selling an existing one.
... issue is, of course, that I can't make an art.
Ugh.
As the days bled into weeks, I spend them mostly in isolation doing something that I thought I'd hate: studying Dao of Space. In order to progress in my cultivation, I had to do it.
But it eluded me.
The requirement was to 'construct' a literal spatial dimension. It didn't have to be big or even stable, as it only needed to last for a breath of time, but I couldn't do it. I had to maintain a literal tether with Qi to stabilize space I was altering, which did not count. The moment I cut the tether, the space would collapse.
I tried supporting it externally outside of the tether, but that didn't count, either. I had to create a self-stabilizing spatial dimension beyond this world, and I just had no idea how. There was one thing I was yet to test: wormholes. Not a literal wormhole, of course, but more so the conceptual idea of spatial displacement. What if I simply made an extremely dense object that displaced space around it, and then I 'added' space 'into it'?
Issue was... how the heck do I create something so dense? So, we were back to square one. I could just legitimately ask Lao Shun or Long Tao as there wasn't some kind of a rule that said 'you have to comprehend this yourself or it doesn't count'; after all, that was how major Disciples and Sect Masters were groomed in all the major sects. They were just told all this crap and all they had to focus on was cultivation itself.
But, I don't know. Call it pride, call it arrogance, but I already have the system assisting me so much for me to also have to rely on my 'Disciples' feels a bit...
Beyond me struggling with the dimension of space, about three weeks into our journey after the little incident with the pyro-tech, a major news emerged among the children: Wan Lan was actually preparing to break through into the Revolving Core Realm.
How? Apparently, during the comprehension array's session, she managed to kind of 'double-dip' into the state of Enlightenment which pushed her directly to the peak of the Spirit Manifestation Realm, and after a few weeks of stabilizing and consolidating it... she was ready to take the next step.
Much to the dismay of little Xiu'er who looked to be on the verge of tears. Not to mentioned the shocked expressions of others, especially Han Yimu, as she announced it and asked me for guidance.
... speaking of.
How the hell can I even help her?!