Chapter 403 - Chosen by Heaven
My heart thundered in my chest as every pore in my body and every hair on my arms stood on end at the sudden realization.
I was going to be played with and discarded.
But just as panic was about to settle in, I forced myself to calm down and think logically.
When things were too convenient, they were a trap ninety-nine percent of the time in a world where fate was often a tangible thing.
Becoming one of Heaven's Chosen was not necessarily a bad thing. It meant I would generally have better luck, and if I didn't go around tempting fate, I should be relatively safe. After surviving difficult situations, there would at least be some kind of reward waiting at the end.
How many times had I fought people with higher cultivation than myself and gotten nothing in return?
That was what happened most of the time.
The only reward I usually received was the removal of a threat and the chance to live another day.
Looking at the titanic frog that resembled a mountain, I accelerated my thoughts and began calculating risks and rewards.
“You should free the frog,” a strange feminine voice sounded inside my head. “It would be a show of goodwill and earn us some trust.”
I almost flinched and sent a mental shockwave into my surroundings at the sudden intrusion.
Thankfully, my thoughts were already accelerated, and I quickly reasoned that this was most likely some form of transmission.
The way the words appeared in my mind resembled Wu Yan's method of communication, where she morphed a special organ to speak.
But this wasn't the same.
Judging by the strange mental fluctuations surrounding me, this was closer to a radio transmission broadcast on a frequency that only my brain could interpret.
Very advanced.
As expected from Jiang Yeming and her future knowledge.
It was an ingenious technique.
Simple to understand in theory. Incredibly difficult to execute in practice.
Despite that, I wasn't even going to entertain her suggestion. Perhaps in the future this frog and I might become the best of friends.
But if we released him now, he could easily kill every single one of us if he felt like it.
That was an unnecessary risk.
As a reader of questionable isekai novels in my previous life, I had consumed my fair share of regression stories. Reality was much more complicated.
Just because someone obtained an opportunity years earlier didn't mean they would achieve the same results. Likewise, just because this frog might become an ally in the future didn't mean he wouldn't immediately try to kill us after being released.
The weird man, who was merely a mental projection of the frog, waved at us with a wide, toothless smile. His hairy arms became partially transparent halfway through the motion.
“Oh?” He glanced down at his hands.
As if on cue, grime, dirt, moss, and loose stone began sliding off the mountain-sized body.
The massive toad shifted. To the titanic creature, it was probably nothing more than a shiver.
To us, it felt like an earthquake. As rocks tumbled down its body and drew closer, I realized they weren't rocks at all.
Those were giant boulders!
The first one crashed into the ground not far from us.
The thing was the size of a house.
The impact split the earth apart, sending cracks racing through the ground and carving out a crater where it landed.
“Thank you for having the courtesy not to drop boulders on us. But how can we be sure you won't kill us all after we release you?” Song San asked.
“Because I can help you get out of this mist. This entire place was not made for people to escape, and doing so is very difficult, even if you aren't specifically trapped by the array,” said the weird man, whose body was gradually becoming transparent. “No matter how many rules you broke to get here, this mist is far better at keeping things in than letting them out.”
He was explaining how the array worked, and his body was fading as he did so.
Meaning whoever had created this seal had taken into account the possibility that the creature serving as the array's core might attempt to explain how to escape.
The backlash was automatic. It was very impressive work. Of all the arrays I knew, this was the second most impressive. Only the array that had split the world's continents ranked above it.
I didn't dwell on that thought for long.
Instead, I glanced at Song San from the corner of my eye as an inexplicable sense of dread washed over me.
It felt almost like a sixth sense.
More realistically, I had subconsciously noticed that Song San was acting strangely, and my instincts warned me that he was planning something.
Either way, I couldn't allow him to gain the upper hand.
This trapped Nascent Soul beast was the biggest variable currently on the board. If Song San managed to turn the situation to his advantage, the consequences could be disastrous.
I had to move first.
I closed my eyes for a brief moment and sent out a thin strand of mental energy toward the giant toad.
Several members of the group immediately noticed.
Jiang Yeming and Song Song, both experienced with mental techniques, watched closely as I acted.
Song San didn't even glance in my direction.
Which only made me more suspicious.
After all, he had openly admitted to possessing poisons capable of controlling minds. Someone like that would not be unfamiliar with mental techniques.
His complete lack of interest was deliberate.
But the moment my mental thread touched the giant blue-skinned toad, a flash exploded across my vision as our mental landscapes connected.
Even though I never blinked, I could suddenly “see” that I had entered a different place.
A vast pond stretched endlessly around me.
Far away, barely visible through the mist, I could make out a moss-covered shoreline.
“Neat mental space,” I said.
A tiny humanoid toad no larger than a squirrel appeared before me. It opened its oversized mouth, let out a croaking sound, and then spoke.
“Yours is interesting as well. Despite the vast difference in our mental power, you still managed to influence this meeting place.”
Usually, when two minds are connected, the resulting landscape reflects their mental worlds. The individual with stronger mental power generally had greater influence over the environment.
There were exceptions, but they were rare.
The toad glanced upward.
Floating high above us was a book without a cover. Its pages spun rapidly, forming a rotating cylinder of paper.
“It seems to be analyzing and mapping my mental energy,” the toad observed. “What exactly are you planning to do with that?”
Even weakened as it was, the creature's mental energy should have vastly surpassed my own.
The gap between us should have been insurmountable. Yet I was still capable of influencing this place and manifesting objects within it.
The suppression arrays throughout the Misty Mountains were restraining it far more heavily than I had initially realized.
“Nothing much. I simply plan to use it as a key to open the mist surrounding us and the seal imprisoning you,” I told him.
The toad snorted.
“I've been trying to get out of this place for millennia. Hate to say it, but the bastard who trapped me here was smart. Or at least the ancestor who gave him this array was smart.”
“Do you know much about why or how you were sealed? Understanding the inner workings of this situation might be useful,” I asked.
It wouldn't help much with the array itself. But perhaps it would help me understand the toad, and more importantly, figure out what he was planning.
“I don't know much about the man who sealed me, but apparently I killed his wife or something along those lines. That bastard!”
One moment, the toad was speaking calmly. The next, he was swearing like a sailor.
“I do not hate humans, nor do I care about your struggles or victories in any way! If I killed some unknown mortal, it was only because I happened to walk through the area. With a body this large, how am I supposed to remember every house or village I stepped on?”
“What did the man who sealed you look like?” I asked.
“All you humans look the same to me, but he had dark hair and pale skin, like he hadn't seen sunlight in years,” the blue toad replied. “The only thing that stood out was a faint beast bloodline. One of his ancestors likely mated with a Nascent Soul beast while it was in human form.”
Oh. Now I had a suspect.
There were very few individuals capable of subtly nudging events and influencing fate enough to lead me here. Perhaps they were even responsible for turning me into one of Heaven's Favorites.
This was going to be troublesome. Mainly because the person responsible was likely already dead.
Oddly enough, I couldn't bring myself to feel too angry. Because I had just learned something incredibly important.
There appeared to be a way to artificially create a Heaven's Favorite!
There were still many things I needed to verify before confirming that theory. But the possibility alone was fascinating.
Everyone assumed Heaven's Favorites were chosen by the world itself.
Yet the technical implications of this entire situation made my blood sing with excitement.
Fate was real. I had always known that. But I had never possessed a tangible method of studying it. Getting close to Heaven's Favorites had always been difficult and unreliable.
Now?
Now things were different.
Obviously, I fully intended to murder whoever had manipulated my fate and destiny like I was some toy on a board.
But another part of me was grateful.
Fuck. I was genuinely excited to investigate this.
First, however, I needed to get everyone out of here alive.
“I'll need some insurance before I release you,” I told the toad.
The tiny humanoid toad stared at me for several seconds.
As always, beast expressions were difficult to interpret.
“How do you intend to make yourself feel safe enough to release me?” he asked.
Thankfully, he didn't launch into a long speech promising never to betray us. Those conversations always boiled down to the same thing; trust me bro, I will not kill you on God, no cap.
And while the wording changed from person to person, the meaning never did.
“I have a beast-controlling technique, and the only way I can see myself coming out of this without worrying about your betrayal is for you to willingly let yourself be affected by it,” I told him.
In reality, I was fairly certain that if we entered a mental battle, I would win.
The Mist Array surrounding the mountain functioned by slowly devouring the mental energy of those who entered, including this beast, using that energy to sustain itself and maintain the seals on the other things trapped within the mist.
Though I hadn't had time to properly investigate and confirm it, I was reasonably confident the array also possessed a hidden function.
If I initiated a mental battle to suppress the toad, the array would likely begin rapidly draining and weakening the Nascent Soul beast's mental energy.
As for why I was taking the more difficult route and attempting to recruit the beast rather than forcibly subjugating it...
That was partly a middle finger to whoever orchestrated this entire situation.
Sure, I wasn't going to turn down an opportunity to obtain a Nascent Soul protector. But that didn't mean I had to follow somebody else's plans word for word.
Besides, when plans stretched over thousands of years, even a small deviation could cause everything to crumble. Immortal or not, nobody was omniscient.
“Can you explain the consequences of this arrangement?” the toad asked after thinking for a long while.
The fact that he even asked showed he was taking my words on faith and assuming I wouldn't lie.
And he was correct. I wasn't going to.
“The main issue is that, despite being a Sky Grade Technique capable of affecting even Nascent Soul beasts, it comes with quite a few restrictions...” I explained how the technique roughly functioned.
Actually, I was just going to call him Ni Shi from now on.
That absurdly long name was becoming a problem.
Ni Shi frowned when I reached the part that explained how I would have absolute authority over his life and death.
The technique functioned more like an extreme form of hypnosis, encouraging loyalty. It wasn't true puppeteering.
“Oh,” I added, remembering a few details I had learned through experimentation. “The technique also has a suppressive effect on cultivation. That's something I'm currently trying to fix.”
“How severe is the suppression?” Ni Shi asked.
“Around five percent. Sometimes closer to ten. But the more concerning issue is how it can affect major breakthroughs between realms,” I answered. “Also, I promise that when I become a Nascent Soul Cultivator, or if I die, I intend to release all of you from my control.”
Ni Shi smiled, his mouth stretched into an unnaturally wide grin, even by toad standards.
Actually, if I died, my control would be released automatically. But if I wanted to be an asshole about it, I could theoretically drag them down with me.
“I appreciate the honesty.” Ni Shi chuckled. “Though it does make me slightly more willing to let you die.”
I smiled back. “I don't need you to be a nanny. Just a trump card.”
He was also underestimating how powerful a Sky Grade Technique truly was at influencing the mind.
Still, I had a feeling he already understood that and was merely joking.
Though it was a foolish thing to joke about. If I were anyone else, he would have already broken the agreement we were attempting to form.
Personally, I didn't mind rebellious people. Nobody needed to follow my rhythm or my way of doing things. I wasn't narcissistic enough to expect everyone to think like me.
As long as they weren't deliberately getting in my way, there was no reason to remove them.
“Since we're being honest...” Ni Shi said, his grin faded slightly. “What if I don't accept your deal?”