Matsuo followed the compass in his hand, whenever a human settlement appeared in his way he went around. Eventually one of these settlements got a reaction from the compass, so he entered it with a shadow clone and saw who it was. Some kid getting beaten by his family constantly, and was also beaten by everyone else. Also abused and used, also forced into gigantic debt to chain him by law to give them money for the rest of their life.
But... he had an evil idea. First, he bought a basic chakra talents scan for a few mill. The chakra regen was below average, the volume was large, and the control was high, the concentration was high, the purity was above average. Basic stat scan for mental ones was above average intelegence and sorta high wisdom. It was all below Matsuo's though, his supiriority was assured. And hr still had his army, power in wave tactics afterall.
he chose to recruit the teen, although he was older than me, power is all that matters in these relationships.
The kid was watched from a far, by him, personally. The moment he went to some big pond, which seemed as his resting place. When he sat down and just looked at the pond for a while, Matsuo got bored and called over a few hundred Xenomorphs, mostly runners.
It took an hour or two to arrive, the abused teen was still in a hazy state of mind, and Matsuo didn't feel like waiting so he made a quick scan for martial arts talent. It was... worse than him, but he did a few challenges to get a few extra points.
First become an old master, add on murim clothes, take out a non-chinese sword/saber. A straight sword, it was larger than a normal murim sword, it also didn't have a hilt like most murim swords. Old Master was large, so his hight and width were 120% bigger than average. In Matsuo's mind, old masters need to be big and intimidating to be convincing.
he had him walk before the pond and take out a fishing rod, the old master didn't even look at the abused teen, now refered to as Sky Line. Because that's going to be his Toaist name, though Matsuo was going to completly rearange Toaism. The dao stuff would stay the same, it was really cool.
Sky Line was still in a haze, until Old Master caught a big fish after a few smaller ones. The smell of cooked fish broke him out of his stupor, it had awakened memories of better days.
Where his old grandfather and him fished in ponds and the like and cooked their catch. What he saw was a small campfire with fish on stickes, and a large old man weirdly spinning and re-positioning a fish countless time.
It looked ridiculous, but that weird focus was like his old man. It made him relax and be less vigilant, people like that were more non-follow the crowd kind of people.
"Gramps," Sky Line asked "What are you doing?" Old Master first snapped his head to him and said "First, I'm not your grandfather, so call me by my name Old Master. Second, you should be able to see that, right? Or are you retarded?"
Sky Line was shocked at the rebuke that came out of Old Master's mouth, he had sub-conciously overlapped the gentle grandfather he remembered over this old man "Sor-" He tried to say something, but was interupted by Old Master "Shut up, I don't care. To seath my anger, you are going to listen to my grievances, or I will break your legs."
Old Master not waiting for Sky Line's response started to complain about his made-up life "You see, I'm a martial artist. Completely different thing compared to all that ninja stuff, but still as powerfull if it was adopted in masse. My old master was compareable to harashima! I literally saw him fight him once, he lost by a small margin. But I'm only at the level of a jonin!"
Resentment, anger and self-loathing radiated out of Old Master, and it just seemed to spiral out of control "Now that I'm in my old age I need to find a disciple to pass on the martial way, and also a bit of Toaism, that is the basis of becoming a fucking immortal!"
Old Master suddenly seemed relieved "But... I met someone actually powerful, in the backround department. He had a bunch of compasses, one of which could let me find someone with enough talent to learn the old man's legacy unlike me." He took out a compass that pointed directly at Sky Line, this shocked Old Master a lot. Just to be sure, he walked around Sky Line.
Old Master nodded and smiled "It's you! Finally! Aahhhh, wait..." Old Master seemed to think of something "Is that settlement over there your home, because, I'm supposed to raise it to the ground..."
Sky Line didn't seem disturbed at all by the last part, he even had a smile while he said "Kill them all if you want, they did something terrible, and they deserve to die." He still remembered when they killed his grandfather for no real reason except not beating him too.
Old master sighed in relief "Good, because..." He gestured in the direction of the city. There was a large smoke cloud being created, there just so happened to be one of the worst abusers running over screaming. Horror was written on her face, when she saw Sky Line she was estatic.
She rushed past him and pushed him backwards, a Xenomorph ran out of the lush forest. At that moment she passed by Old Master and tried to push him over too, but, for some reason she fell to the gound, no longer able to control her legs. Unable to feel them, as the nerves were disconected.
Old Master had drawn his sword and cut of her legs! He then stood above her and etherial energy seemed to seap into her and, a sound of seperation resounded. A glas like substance floated out from her, it then went into Old Master's chest.
The Xenomorph ignored Sky Line and Old Master and went straight to the woman, and it killed her in a brutal and primal way. Old Master treated it as an everyday accourance, and started to speak again "First, you are now my disciple. Second, you have a new martial name which is Sky Line. If you have any problems with this arengement, and want to have your legs broken, raise your hand."
Sky Line Didn't raise his hand and Old Master nodded, proud of his extremely high ability to convince people "Good disciple, follow me quickly!" Old Master said as he began to sprint at a level Sky Line could barely keep up with.
Old Master also showed of his martial prowess by flipping over a log with momentum and keeping that momentum with a parkour roll, this amazed Sky Line and left him in the dust. But they were close to the finish line anyways.
What Sky Line saw when he arrived was that Old Master was taking out some of the tinted glass out of his chest, multiple of them. They floated in Abyss's hand, one of them flew into Old master's and the place it phased through glowed in a silver light.
When it entered Abyss it glowed in a red hue, Old Master asked Abyss "What are you going to do now?" Abyss pondered for a bit and said "I am going to... Reposition. And I'm going to work in a... different direction."
Old master laughed and scratched his head "Can I live with you for a while? You see, I was cooking... And one thing led to another, into me offending the city lord and my house burning to ashes."
Although Sky Line could not see too clearly what Abyss did, he could hear a sigh "Although I really don't want to, I have already cleared up my current base... So you can stay there and have it, I will leave it anyways in about a month." Sky Line felt a hidden relief hidden under the reluctance.
Abyss looked at Sky Line, and said "This is your disciple, right?" He walked closer, and inspected Sky Line "Heh, looks like I still have it in me to make worldly compasses." Abyss walked back and said "Since he's young, he won't apreaciate the product. So it'll be 325 roots for a source,"
Old Master seemed unhappy at that number, but he seemed not to be able to complain "Okay..." He seemed quite beaten down "I'm going now, I need to teach Sky Line the basics."
Abyss nodded and and waved a good bye, and left with his great number of Xenomorphs.
Old Master sighed and said "Sky Line, you're training starts today. Let's start with the basics, a good body. We're going to be journeying to the land of lightning, and you're going to get their without my physical help."
And so started to journey of Sky Line, the martial lord. Only behind the martial sovereign, Finish Line.
Speaking of Finish Line, he was training while letting his shadow clones do all the work. This was the continuation of the expiriments of making sources, he had bought an upgrade of the shadow clone. The source lowers the net loss of chakra or even making it a net positive, lengthening or making the time out a thing of the past. Previously the chakra used for ninjutsu and all that other stuff was seperated, but now it was one with the time limit pool. Letting me or others just making it last longer, though it using chakra made it die faster. Though after a source was good enough that problem was lost.
However the source was for both Abyss and the one he just provided Old Master when it was created was enough to stop the time out part of the shadow clone, it could even enhance the source with my knowledge now. Even enhancing itself temperarily for a bit wasn't too difficult, permanently was beyond its chakra stores. Maybe with a really good source that even Matsuo's personally created one was incomparable, and that was going to take some time.
Matsuo had already bought a shipbuilding 101 book and had read it to completion quickly with two clones, he had finally learned the technique of using shadow clones to quicken the learning process. Though that doesn't work with perma-clones, they don't dissapear, though Matsuo gets them from a perma-clone's clone. So, perma-clone training devices don't work.
"Wait... Perma-clone making training clones... I'm a genius!" In truth he should feel ashamed of himself for not realizing this earlier, but it was still powerful to obtain it, but he still sighed "But, I don't have nearly enough roots for a perma clone right now."
*Info dump incomming!* Sources have different colorations, first is just the normal glas distortion without any coloration, so its called a null source by Matsuo. Then from lowest to highest there is; white, gray, yellow, green, orange, blue, red, brown, dark grey, and black.
Then there are the rank 2 sources, first the null of this rank, rank being self-explanitory, was called lustrous null. The others are; copper, tin, bronze, bismuth, lead, astatine, cobalt, titanium, zinc, silver, iron, gold, diamond, obsidian, and tungsten.
Rank three is what Matsuo's current source was in, he was acting as Abyss personally just then. Right now he had only one perma-clone, and right now martial arts didn't work with clones. And martial arts permanently strengthened the body... It was time for a journey, for practical experince and roots