"Um, do these fish taste funny to anyone?" Asked Liang Cuifen.
There were so many fish that one would think it would be impossible not to catch them. But these fish were strangely strong. Some even jumped back in the water with annoyed faces she thought, as if getting caught with a fishing line was a serious inconvenience to their lifestyle.
Wooden spears though, worked wonders. Courtesy of Yao Qing who made and used them.
"It is because we are the outsiders," Treebeard answered. "Each world has its own laws and uniqueness. Just like how water tastes different from two springs, so does food, even simple ones." Treebeard took a bite out of his skewer. The rich aroma could be delicious to some, but to Liang Cuifen the smell was off.
"I often heard worlds themselves could reject outsiders." Jin Shu spoke absentmindedly. "My father used to speak of it when I was little; that the very air would be poisonous to those without cultivation." Jin Shu chuckled after seeing Liang Cuifen freeze mid-bite. "Fufu. Master would have already thought about this."
"The taste won't be so bad once our bodies get used to this realm." Added Treebeard. He too didn't have cultivation like Liang Cuifen. He could still see some doubts in the girl's mind, so he supported Jin Shu's words. "Both of us would have caught fevers if Master hadn't intervened. Eat. These fish grew up with more spiritual energy than low-level cultivators would encounter in their lifetime; they will be good for our bodies."
Ning Bi looked to the west. Everything was peaceful. The sound of wind caressing the leaves, the gentle splash of the white river, the warmth of the sun, she took everything in. Then, she closed her eyes. Numerous tiny lights were scattered across the landscape. Little dots making up the silhouette of the mountains, tiny pearls showing the flow of water, scintillating dust revealing the motion of the wind.
She could see it all, clearly. And she could see them running away, clearly.
Yao Qing sat down near Ning Bi after cleaning the fish. "The animals are leaving." She spoke, her eyes scanning the horizon.
Treebeard raised his head, looked around, and listened. "Insects?" He asked, because his senses were too dull to hear things far away.
"Animals are running, insects are burrowing, and the fish are leaving." Jin Shu glanced at the river. "We won't be able to eat fish for a while." She could guess the reason for this… exodus. It had to have something to do with their master, whose life energy was unlike anyone else's. The little pet she had made earlier also ran away from their master, not even minding that it lost its life in the process.
As the group of disciples ate in silence, Jin Shu wondered. Not the reason, nor the cause. Rather, she was interested in whether she could surpass it.
Could she create spiritual beasts, that weren't intimidated by their master? She almost picked up a discarded pine cone and used every ounce of cultivation she had. But the words of their master were clear, they weren't to use their cultivation, by extension, their bloodlines.
Jin Shu frowned deeply, her eyes still on that orange cone, wondering the possibilities as she nibbled at her slightly undercooked fish.
Meanwhile, some distance away, Yu Xian was sitting on the ground, the words of Han De still echoing in his mind.
'You didn't have a cultivation a few days ago…'
Yu Xian recognized the point of Han De's lesson. He understood it so well that it was pointless for him to relearn it. Yes, it was true. A God-King like him had lost everything. Already. But would he do so again? Would he fall again? No. That was the answer; no.
'There will come a time when even your cultivation base will disappear.'
The words seemed almost prophetic to Yu Xian for reasons outside of logic. He wouldn't fall again; a second time simply wasn't possible. Yet, he couldn't extinguish that tiny flame, that glow of intuition.
Could a Nascent Soul disciple look through the threads of fate? No, they were but mere ants, barely stepped into the world of cultivation, let alone understanding the flow of Dao. Whether one was the heir of a higher being family was irrelevant.
Unless.
Unless they were one of those Immortal Sentinels.
Yu Xian had briefly entertained that Han De was a disciple of that sect. In hindsight, this was just a wild speculation, a family of higher beings didn't need such organizations. Perhaps Han De's divination art was even superior to the one he knew. Such a connection didn't matter, what mattered was the divination art Han De practiced, stemmed from the same source; Yu Xian had no doubts.
Did Han De see something? Yu Xian wondered. Almost started doubting himself, almost. The power of Immortal Sentinels wasn't ordinary. "Will I repeat the same mistakes?" He muttered. Despite betrayal, his Dao was never shaken. Despite starting over, he would soar through the heavens once again. This, was inevitable.
If so, was his fall also inevitable?
If he didn't have the little hammer, Yu Xian would've almost suspected that Han De knew about his past, his true past as the God-King. But he abandoned this thought. Doubt had no use for the God-King.
No one knew, no one would ever know, but that wouldn't stop an Immortal Sentinel. They would peek, regardless; whether that caused their destruction was irrelevant to them.
Yu Xian closed his eyes, felt the wind brushing against his cheeks, felt the cold seeping his bones, the torn flesh underneath his feet. Ravages of high spiritual energy, eroding his mortal vessel simply by existing. When he opened his eyes, he realized he was denying his own doubts. Out of fear? Out of pride? He didn't know, but he became determined.
"Live as a mortal…?" Yu Xian muttered as if he was asking a question, then answered himself with another. "Why not?"
How could a cultivator live without trusting their own intuition?
* * *
Far above the mountains.
As he carefully, very, very carefully replenished his spiritual energy supplies, Han De became aware of a peculiarity. Something that his disciples already noticed.
'Are these animals running away because of my bloodline?'
He had tested this before on spiritual beasts with Ning Bi. The effect wasn't as exaggerated then, though he hadn't gone through an evolution either. Now he wasn't even fully human.
'… I've been going through all this effort just to avoid disturbing the natural life… I could've just smashed the mountains and the result would've been the same…' Han De blankly stared at a pair of squirrels, desperately climbing down, running for their lives.
Energy ripples from his techniques? No, he was exceedingly efficient, a regular animal -spiritual or not- couldn't detect them. The sight of a floating mountain? Unless the animals around him had the eyes of an elf, they couldn't have seen his handiwork on the opposite side of the sect.
Han De went through some other possible explanations, none were satisfactory. So he decided to test. He came near a couple of running squirrels and bound them through a simple sealing technique, barely worth mentioning the spiritual energy cost. Then he used his Twilight Phantasm scripture to restrict their cognition.
If the animals were truly running away from him out of instinct, all he had to do was to block that instinct.
'… It could be something unrelated to my bloodline, but better safe than sorry, I suppose.'
The movement seal on one of the squirrels disappeared, causing it to look around in confusion, then run to the other one, presumably its mate. Han De observed closely under the veil of invisibility, his scent otherwise undisturbed.
'Still stressed, maybe even more so now. It shouldn't be able to remember that they were captured by me. It shouldn't remember a predator if they were running from one either. No, this looks like a response to my scent.'
Han De released the other one too, and watched their reactions through his spiritual sense. The squirrels went under a crack hidden by a short bush. That particular split ran through halfway to the base of the mountain, but the squirrels only hid. The two shivered holding one another, as if they were accepting the inevitable.
Han De modified the mental suppression to include any fear response related to the sense of smell. The squirrels' limbs lost their stiffness in real time, their eyes lost their tenseness, and their breathing relaxed. Han De continued to play, slowly releasing the suppression in order to isolate the specific response to his own body odor. The grandmaster illusionist at work.
'… It's weird to do this to an innocent animal. Or is it?' Han De couldn't tell. The action was all natural to him. As easy as walking, as thoughtless as breathing. 'I already did this to humans I suppose.' He shook his head, momentarily distracted by the extent of his actions in the past.
An animal's brain was far simpler than a human's. Within a minute, Han De figured out how to isolate the correct response, despite the anatomical differences.
But that brought another problem to his attention. The sect borders were too vast. Covering everything with the aura of Twilight Phantasm would slow down the array construction, since Han De was the only one working on it. The thought of using his lackeys never entered the mind of Han De the Array Grandmaster.
The work had to be done right, or never be done at all.
'Fine.' Han De relented to his inner struggle. 'I'll just make an array for it, and only allow productive species.' It wasn't just animals, he could tell that any insects downwind were scattering, without even looking where they were going. Life was getting driven away by Han De's scent. Masking his own odor was a possibility of course, perhaps he would have even chosen to do so in the past. But not anymore. How could an array grandmaster resort to such crude methods?!
Han De entered the lotus position in mid-air -simply because he could- and started replenishing his spiritual energy reserves. Strangely, his thoughts were empty, perhaps from the anticipation of practicing his newfound arts. Neither the System nor the Li family occupied any place in his mind.
* * *
Inside the meditation chambers of the Celestial Lotus Sect, a man wearing simple Daoist robes scowled. A bead of sweat traveled across his wrinkled forehead, landed on his bushy eyebrows, and slowly made its way down to the defining feature of the man, his big nose, and then, freedom. But this freedom was short-lived, for the drop of sweat met a forest of white hair so well groomed that it slid across the surface and splashed on the ground, leaving nothing but a thin white smoke in its wake.
"Hmmm…" The old man muttered, his eyebrows raising and lowering themselves as his lips quivered. "Mm." The meditation chamber had nothing inside, not an incense, a candle, or even a mat; simple stone pillars supported the high ceiling, everything uniformly gray, lit only by the old man's flickering radiance. As the dance of the shadows intensified, those ancient hands trembled.
*Cough* Blood spattered on the ground, sizzling with spiritual energy, filling the empty chambers with roaring blue smoke.
"I do not believe!" The stone chambers cracked under the pressure of the old man's sudden shout. "I do not believe that I can't divine this!" Dust from the fissures pushed back on the stone walls as the old man's Daoist robes violently fluttered, unable to contain his radiance, and unshakable will.
*Cough* More blood, now sprayed to the chamber walls, erupting with blue flames upon touch. The old man's veins throbbed, red liquid started pouring down from his eyes and ears. *Cough* *Crack* Even more blood, but the meditation chamber couldn't hold any longer. The ceiling gave up first, the air inside rushed out like a hurricane, bringing chunks of stone from columns, the walls, and even some floor tiles.
The old man gave a final push. Blood, he swallowed; cracked bones, he endured; wailing of the disintegrating chambers, he ignored. His eyes closed, his mind concentrated on the infinite threads of fate, the old man went against the will of the heavens, unable to stop his own will to know, to see the future.
Something inside the old man's left shoulder, a tinge of red mixed into the blueish storm. Another one popped on the old man's neck, then another near his chest. The old man was still unwilling, but in the next moment his body was suddenly thrown back, going through the thick outer walls of his chambers, the old man crashed onto the sect pavilion. His divination was no more, but the old man wasn't surprised.
"Master!" A young voice reverberated throughout the valley, making everyone under the Nascent Soul realm cower from the sheer pressure alone!
"Protect the sect master!!" Numerous answers echoed, the sect elders and his relatives, the old man noticed. Thankfully, he had lost too much blood for his face to turn red at this point.
"Master! What happened?!" The old man's eyes couldn't see anything but red, so he relied on the last remaining bits of his spiritual sense. 'Ah, my nephew…' A sigh came naturally, but only coughs came out, each one bringing back more of a long-forgotten sensation. Pain.
"How could this be?!" Someone murmured. "A bad omen!?" Someone gasped. "Are heavens themselves against our Celestial Lotus Sect?!…" Someone wept.
The old man couldn't find it in himself to utter a single word. The youngest elder, his nephew, raised the old man's chest. "Uncle," the young man whispered, "what kind of calamity? What made you push so hard?"
The old man's lips trembled. 'Just let me die in peace you ingrates!' He screamed in his heart. But he had to say something, the old man realized, but what? Could he really say he was carried away by a random event and tried to divine something completely unrelated to the sect?
The old man decided that he would rather die.
"…The heavens are changing…" The old man whispered, almost grimacing. "Beware of the east, of the light."
The old man's eyes closed, appearing peaceful, as if he had fulfilled his life's mission. Truly, death at that moment would be a blessing. A blessing, that wasn't available to the old man. It was unfortunate the vitality in his body was too tenacious to let him die; a Dao Seed realm expert's body healed all too quickly.
"Uncle!!"
"Sect Master!!"
The old man ignored the cries and tried to think of the jade beauties from his youth.