Surviving the shody work at multidimensional travel was only a matter of time and endurance, both of mind and of body, but when the gravitational pull was finally stable, Aki saw that he and the gagging specter in his hand were currently skydiving towards an old style asian mansion.
They weren't burning alive, so it was clear that it wasn't a fall from the stratosphere or the like, but the fact they were approaching a mountain peak at high speed while only having one sea of clouds below made him think whatever the size of this place actually was, it clearly went up and above anything he could comprehend by comparing it to earth.
Then he saw her, a woman so beautiful man with a more common thought process would have fallen for her at first sight. Aki just felt highly afraid.
When she looked back and calmly drank her tea before moving as if she didn't have a care in the world, he couldn't be angrier at the thing he was holding. Putting it above him so there was a bubble of vacuum between them, he started screaming.
"YOU BROUGHT US TO A CULTIVATION WORLD?!"
"That would be so." Confirmed the immortal while stopping their fall and teleporting them to the ground.
[Greetings senior. This junior apologizes for interrupting your time with yourself.] Aki immediately went into polite mode and sat himself while pressing the demon down, his words laced with meaning so a translation would not be necessary. [With your permission I will be taking my leave.] He wearily said, waiting for a response.
"Mind arts? Being ussed without intent to attack? Intriguing." She paused and concentrated [Say, would you accompany me for a while? I did save your life after all.] She sweetly smiled, doing something similar to him by using illusions, sending shivers down his spine.
[No offense ment to senior, but this one doesn't have much time. I need to use this creature's contract to reach my loved ones again. Without proper preparation I will be stranded.] He wrily smiled. [Senior does not have to pretend with me though. I don't mind exchanging my help for safe passage.] This made her face slack and completly cold.
[A smart boy I see, but what makes you think you can deny me help?] At that he smiled.
[We both know none of the present would have a problem dying senior. Treats are quite useless at the moment. I imagine there was a reason for your prison's location though.]
[There is a lay line of pure yang in this mountain. The air itself is harmful to my cultivation, and all the energy is focused on keeping my barrier.] She admitted and Aki rolled his eyes.
["Fiance?"] He asked, his fingers and tone indicating he was sarcastic on the use of the word. She nodded. [Well, that does explain the desolate wasteland with undead. I'll say this now as a warning, but you should really think of what you will do AFTER you get revenge.] He said, getting up.
She was shocked for a bit, but ultimately shook it off and noticed he was going for the barrier while still carrying the demon.
[Hold this guy and don't kill him, ok?] He asked, Biaoji Tianyi [1] simply holding the demon in place with her energy. She still wasn't prepared for him simply walking through the barrier, his skin burning and flaking off as he calmly put his hand on the now glowing line separating them from the rest of the world.
And he started to refine it. Energy equivalent to that of someone at the late stages of the unity realm started to part and capture the yang around, quickly forming a vacuum that was filled with even more energy, which he also absorbed.
A bit later he stopped altogether, seeming completly unaffected. Which was quite strange since he'd absorbed enough in one sitting to get him to break through to the ascension realm with no problem at the very least.
[Well, that's definetly not something we have where I come from. Not a problem though, I can divert this thing back to normal course if you give me some fifteen minutes. It will take all of an hour or three before that guy is summoned back, so there's no rush. You will even have a Yin filled army waiting for you on the other side, just gotta tame them.] He shrugged, his fingers beginning to glow as he started forming what she could only call a command rune. With only his energy.
[That man is considered a formation genius in this realm, is it really so simple?] She questioned.
[Yes, of course.] Aki quickly rebuted, his lines of command starting to form a cube one meter in all sizes. [The best way to explain is that I am simply making his commands redundant and having the formation route the energy back to the land by overruling him in his own...]
[Not a very good translation, shorten it up.] She drily said.
[He didn't make this shit thinking someone could read his program and I can use the formation to re-write it because there's so much energy around I can subvert or forge a signature similar to his then write gibberish all over.] He dumbed it down.
[See, was that so hard?] She scoffed.
[Yes.] He rebuted.
[By the way, why don't you have a cultivation base? Your energy ussage is clearly too good for you to have some kind of problem.] She asked after some moments of silence.
[Because i don't know how to make one that would be compatible with my soul and body. By the time i could find my meridians and all that cultivation bullshit i'd already reached a level where unlocking the basic doesn't make a diference and even foundation establishment makes no sense to me. I mean, i'm pretty sure i don't have some kind of qi root on my body anyway, so i can't be so sure i'm even able to do it.] He explained, completly losing the sight of the cringing woman tensing at his every word.
[Don't move] She seeted, clearly angry for some reason, as she caught his wrist and injected some of her own energy into him, which made him stop and prepare several attacks, but he didn't stop her as the strand passed from his arms to his bowels to his heart and brain before coming back. [You're perfectly normal. Not one sign of cultivating something that would allow you to control energy.] She cringed, her face spouting her total confusion.
[It could be that your cultivation system is flawed, but i'm half sure literally everyone should be able to manipulate energy to a certain extent if they can detect it, only some special constitutions don't have any energy inside, so affecting the exterior shouldn't be too much of a problem with mere training?] Aki comented like he was speaking common sense, going back to his enchanting as the necromancer lady had her world view shatered.
It was only when he walked to another point and had her release his wrist that the chinese beauty with phoenix eyes and waist long glossy black hair noticed she'd been lost in her own world for a while now.
[If what you say is true, then what if i guided you through your cultivation until the unity realm, where you can merge your cultivation base, martial body and soul?] She suggested, the young man in front of her pausing for a moment, turning around and smiling at her.
[You want to use me to attract the man who got you here!] He beamed. [I'm in.] He smirked like the proper maniac he was, dispersing the command construct he'd spent ten minutes scribing already.
*****
Ben Zazhong [2] felt a disturbance, an alarm that one of his arrays was being attacked. One of his secret arrays at that. Quickly rushing away from his cultivation room and ignoring the falling pills, he Immediately paled when he saw what was happening.
A great tribulation cloud was attacking his barrier in the rotten bone dessert.
As he was panicking, his rational mind kicked in, reminding him that he still had time. As long as he got to her quickly, she'd be too spent from the tribulation to defeat him with whatever powers she may gain from becoming an immortal empress, nevermind that her cultivation should be damaged from the strong yang Qi of her surroundings.
It was a bit soon, but he'd use the chance to make an even better pill than first planed.
He'd not be able to call for reinforcement because of who was there, but he could still prepare.
*****
"Wow, tribulations are super easy." Commented Aki, getting a slap on the back of the head for it. Now that he had a cultivation base, he was able to receive information through divine sense easily enough, so now he could talk the local language just fine.
"Easy your ass!" Complained his 'teacher' "Many die because of this kind of thing all the time, nevermind advancing so easily or so quickly."
"I know, but you saw how easy it was for me! I'm just happy I don't have to be your average cultivator, you know?" He rebuted. "Anyway, It took a bit more than an hour already, where's our guy?" He asked, a figure appearing in the distance. "Fuck this place is weird." *FWUN* "And apparently loves me. Damn is this going to be fun!"
A beam of light parted the skies, taking with it all the tribulation energy Aki had stored, plus several artifacts and an arm of the man in the distance, Tianyi already over him and ready to strike with the dragon bone sword that'd been offered to her, turning her former captor into a shooting star as his maimed self crashed against several undead and sand dunes.
With the otherworlder teleporting to his mark, he took out his sealing spikes, happy to have his magic and arcenal back to full potential after he 'aclimated' himself to the new reality he found himself at. He'd happily pretended and ussed his bateries instead of his murkier natural resources, but there was just something about ussing his own magic that was intoxicating. Like kissing Sera, though her saliva was mildly aphrodisiatic, he was more than immune to it really.
"THAT'S IT!? THAT'S ALL YOU ARE EVEN WITH ALL YOUR SHINY BAUBLES AND FANCY PILLS?!" Screamed the 'avenged' woman, stomping her heel on their imobilized oponent as he gasped in pain, no idea as to how he'd been defeated so easily or what in all heavens and hells had been that initial attack.
"Excuse me." Aki calmly placed a hand on her shoulder, smiling at the snarling woman and waving at the torture table he'd summoned. "Knives? Flails? Nails? Graters? All tested and efficient enough to work on beings made of literal steel." He advertised, shocking the woman in question and making their captive somehow get paler.
And he'd not even seen the chairs he carried arround.
A tortured soul without ideas and several hours later.
"Wait, weren't you supposed to teleport back with that demon in three hours? It's been way more than that." Asked a dishaveled and bloodied immortal.
"Yeah, well, aparently three hours here equals a second there. I cheked." Aki explained with a cold tone, a tired sigh as he pated the emcapsuled demon on his belt. "I'ma gonna need another way and more things to keep my mind ocupied. I get the irony of the situation, yes, but thanks to jackass here i'm fine for now. What do you say we raid his place and give the same treatment to his buddies across the world? Let them see it all burn and i stop you if you turn into too much of a bitch deviating from what's important?" He suggested, a small smile on his face as he offered a hand to the woman in front of him.
The crazy witch took in ragged breaths, looking between his face and hand through her cascading hair for a bit before taking it.
[1]: Supposed to mean 'Mark of heaven's will'
[2]: Supposed to mean 'Stupid Mutt'.