Chapter 371: Immortal Leeches and Losers |
After that whole debacle with Song Song, I went to have dinner with Fu Yating. It was just the two of us. Wu Yan was out with Jiang Yeming; they were practically best friends now. As for Song Song, she was buried in tedious leadership matters and catching up on her cultivation.
“What happened today?” Fu Yating asked as she set the last plate on the table.
I considered dodging the question, steering the conversation elsewhere. But we were married now. Keeping secrets like that felt pointless.
So I gave her a brief explanation of what had happened between Song Song and me, leaving out the finer details.
I’d expected many reactions, but Fu Yating’s expression was… strange. When she heard that Song Song and I had genuinely disagreed, she almost looked pleased.
What the hell was going on in her head? Why did she seem happy that I wasn’t getting along with another woman?
Oh.
I think I got it.
…
In the short term, the changes were barely noticeable. Still, I researched how long it usually took a cultivator at my stage to recover.
For an average person, full recovery after a month-long coma could take three to six months, including coordination. With my cultivation, things moved faster.
That said, my situation was far worse than a normal coma. Aside from my brain, the rest of my body had barely been receiving signals. It was almost as if it had begun to rot from the inside.
A full recovery was possible, but I likely wouldn’t reach the average lifespan of a Foundation Establishment cultivator, which was around one hundred and fifty years. Though that was assuming only the theoretical side of things, and perhaps I could study if lifespan was more connected with the mystical aspect of cultivation than just simple physical reinforcement.
My mental energy also felt erratic, harder to control than usual. That paranoia wouldn’t leave me. I kept wondering if the Blood Step Immortal had left something behind, something subtle I couldn’t detect yet. Maybe it was just an aftereffect. Still, I ran daily tests to be sure.
My reaction time had suffered too. My first Foundation Technique felt sluggish. Where time once seemed to stop completely, now it merely slowed. That was one of the reasons Song Song had managed to land a hit on me before I could raise a defensive array.
My brain had been shocked. Even though I’d deleted the memories, it had still been forced to process twenty thousand years of experiences, multiple times.
It felt like damaged hardware. The program still ran, but not smoothly. Maybe it was less damage and more overheating with processors pushed far past their limits.
Either way, I shouldn’t use mentally taxing techniques for a while unless it was a matter of life and death. I should let the processors cool down a bit.
Just to be safe.
But not all was bad. I now had firsthand experience of being crushed by someone with vastly stronger mental energy, and with that experience came knowledge. I was eager to return to peak condition and resume experimenting, especially since I already had one or two ideas on how to deal with Nascent Soul creatures without becoming a Nascent Soul cultivator myself.
As I stepped into the yard, the cool morning air brushed against my skin. Thinking of the road ahead, excitement surged through me, and my fingers curled into a tight fist without my noticing.
With Song Song’s situation settled for now, and Speedy’s breakthrough toward a beast bloodline no longer hanging over my head, I was free.
There were still problems in my life. But I was free to do whatever the hell I wanted.
With the Blood Step Immortal gone, for now, I could finally breathe again. His existence had always been suffocating.
As long as she didn’t get herself killed, Song Song would eventually reach Nascent Soul.
I slowly levitated off the ground, savoring the sensation this time, and drifted northward toward the edge of the sect.
After my teacher told me the Blazing Sun Immortal had visited, I’d deliberately waited until I recovered to a reasonable degree before going to meet him.
Passing rows of buildings while recalling the sect map, my thoughts wandered.
The Blazing Sun Immortal had said he wouldn’t intervene in sect matters unless a Nascent Soul cultivator interfered. My original plan had been to force the Blood Step Immortal into doing just that. But the looming war between sects had thrown everything off balance, forcing me to rush things, afraid that Song Song’s father would act first and take over her body. By then, it would’ve been too late.
And why had the Blazing Sun Immortal appeared while I was in a coma? He wouldn’t do something like that without reason. He had wanted to meet me.
From what he’d told my teacher, it sounded like he already knew about my first failed plan.
How? I had no idea. I hadn’t told anyone.
But immortals who had lived that long were never dull or stupid. The thought of what he might be planning unsettled me. And even now, I couldn’t shake my unease about the Blood Step Immortal.
Everything had gone well, better than well really, but paranoia lingered. What if letting himself be sealed had been part of the plan?
Why had he been alone when I confronted him? We had contingencies in place in case he brought others. Yet it had almost felt as though Song Song’s father had made things easier for us.
It was entirely possible I was overthinking it. But sometimes, assuming the worst was the safer option.
I arrived at the place where I’d first met the Blazing Sun Immortal, back when he’d played the role of a clueless teenager.
The land was unrecognizable now. Where solid ground once stood, a wide pond had formed, its still waters quietly swallowing everything that had existed there before.
I closed my eyes and spread my senses to their limit, catching something strange about five miles west.
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If the Blazing Sun Immortal truly wanted to hide his Qi, there was no way I would have sensed him. Which meant he wanted to be found. That alone was unsettling; it ran counter to his usual laid-back, indifferent demeanor.
Following the faint anomaly, I arrived at the outskirts of a small village. A man stood beside a modest wooden house, working the fields with steady, practiced motions.
He was no longer a teenager. The strange sensation I’d felt came from him, and now he looked like an older version of the Blazing Sun Immortal I had first met.
Then a woman stepped out of the house, holding a bundle in her arms.
A baby.
She looked young, maybe nineteen. The Blazing Sun Immortal’s skin was rougher now, weathered like someone who had spent years under the sun, working with his hands. He looked older than before, intentionally so.
Okay. This guy was an absolute weirdo. But that was expected.
“Honey, go back inside,” he called to the woman. “It’s chilly today. Not good for you or the baby.”
“You worry too much,” she replied with a frown.
Still, she listened and went back in.
The Blazing Sun Immortal wiped sweat from his brow with the grimy towel slung over his shoulder, rested both hands on his hoe, and finally looked up at me.
I should have been far enough away that a normal human wouldn’t even see me.
I descended and landed about ten feet in front of him, careful not to step on the crops he’d clearly worked hard to plant.
He didn’t look at me right away. Instead, he stared at the house and sighed.
“That woman is a slave driver. Has me working all day, then I still have to remind her of basic necessities. How can someone like that be fit to be a normal wife or mother?” He shook his head in disapproval. “When we were younger, she almost beat one of the village boys to death with a stick for making an inappropriate joke. I swear, no one would marry a violent woman like that.”
Then he added, almost fondly, “But she’s also the love of my life. And my good old prison chain.”
When we were younger.
The words made my skin crawl. He was a man who had lived for millennia, talking like this about a girl barely out of childhood. Creepy didn’t even begin to cover it.
I said nothing, simply stared at him, waiting for him to decide when we would talk about something that actually mattered.
“I know you might doubt that, given how long I’ve lived and how many wives I’ve had,” the Blazing Sun Immortal continued. “But when I marry, I always marry for love.”
So he wasn’t ready for business yet.
And of course he married for love. Who could possibly force someone like him into marriage for any other reason?
Why was he even bothering to act like a powerless, rustic nobody?
“My father always said to respect the sanctity of marriage and all that,” he added casually.
This guy hadn’t been born poor the way he was acting now. The Blazing Sun Immortal came from a cultivator family, one that had been noble, no less. His father likely had mistresses, and I seriously doubted he’d preached anything about the sanctity of marriage.
Even if their line of thought went in a different direction, this man was about as unhinged as the Blood Step Immortal.
Still, whether his father had said those things or not didn’t really matter. It felt strange, talking to an immortal about mundane life and parental wisdom. No matter how monstrous they became, there had once been a time when even these beings were just children.
He kept rambling about meaningless things, showing no interest in getting serious.
“I agree with you on the sanctity of marriage,” I said. “But I don’t understand why you’re out here acting like a farmer.”
“Acting?” He snorted, looking genuinely offended. “I actually work these fields and sell the crops to make ends meet. Being a farmer is hard these days, but at least monstrous beasts have been less rampant.”
I could wholeheartedly say that I didn’t understand this man at all. He was absolutely insane.
What was his obsession with living a life of labor? From what I’d read in the sect’s records, the Blazing Sun Immortal hadn’t come from a farming family. He wasn’t reliving some lost childhood. He’d been born into a prominent clan, one that had scattered across the world millennia ago.
Eventually, I stopped dwelling on a question I would probably never get an answer to.
“You wanted to meet me,” I said. “Why?”
The Blazing Sun Immortal sighed, as if disappointed that the conversation had turned toward cultivation.
“I don’t care much about what happens in the outside world, or even about the Blazing Sun Sect,” he said, openly admitting his indifference toward the organization he’d founded. “But… I like the lives I live. I love my wife and my child.”
Alright. Where was he going with this?
“My heavenly calamities have never been much trouble,” he continued. “I possess a very lethal, attack-type immortal technique, one that can destroy anything.” From his tone, I doubted he was exaggerating. “But that doesn’t mean I can handle everything. Some things can disrupt this peace. Some things even make me unsure.”
So he was worried.
That alone was unsettling. What could trouble someone who seemed indifferent to everything beyond his personal life?
“For as long as I can remember,” he went on, “most immortals like us are obsessed with controlling their own futures and fates. Reading them, reshaping them.”
There was a faint mocking undertone, as if he looked down on those who did such things. “And when they glimpse a future that ends in their death, they try to avoid it. Usually, they never share what they see… but–”
He paused, smiling at me, fully aware that he’d hooked my attention.
Did he really have to be so petty and pause right there as things were getting interesting?
“Well, nobody knows who started the conversation first. But some immortals realized their predicted demises all clustered around the same period,” he said with a chuckle. “That was what eventually led to the discovery of the coming Age of Immortals. The prophecies matched, long before the continents were even separated.”
That was… interesting. And from the way he spoke, it was clear there was a hierarchy among immortals as well.
Those who manifested reincarnation- or divination-type immortal techniques clearly sat near the bottom. Because they reeked of insecurity, of immortals who didn’t trust themselves enough after crossing that final threshold. That doubt alone could shackle them.
“What level were the divination techniques they used to read fate?” I asked.
With my access to the Blazing Sun Sect’s highest records, I wasn’t completely ignorant on the matter. Most such techniques were Sky Grade at minimum; immortals could usually brute-force their way past fate. Yet the fact that so many foresaw mass death during the same era was troubling.
“Nobody I know is stupid enough to gamble their existence on an immortal-grade divination technique,” the Blazing Sun Immortal said. “Those are often unavoidable death sentences. Once such a fate is read, it becomes absolute.”
He paused, then added, “The future is like a tree with endless branches. A divination technique cuts away all but one, and forces that branch to become reality.”
“Wait,” I said. “What if two divination techniques give different results?”
For the first time since we’d met, he truly looked at me. His gaze sharpened, no longer distant or playful.
“What kind of madman would even try that?” he asked, though the corner of his lip twitched. “Anyway, what I really wanted to know is whether the Blood Step Immortal revealed anything in his memories. He’s the second-oldest immortal I know on this continent. The oldest is probably dead by now.”
“As far as I could tell, he wasn’t deeply involved in immortal affairs,” I replied.
That was technically true. And even if it wasn’t, there was no chance I’d hand over a copy of the Blood Step Immortal’s memories.
The Blazing Sun Immortal sighed and picked up his farming tool, clearly ready to return to his fields.
“See you later, young man. Keep an eye on things, and don’t hesitate to report anything unusual to me,” he said. “If you bring me something worth my time, I might even help you deal with that pathetic leech more permanently.”
So in his eyes, the Blood Step Immortal was nothing more than a parasite.
“Oh, and be careful,” he added as an afterthought. “Strange things have been happening lately. For example, my heavenly calamity is late. That’s never happened before. Unless something far worse is coming.”
His heavenly calamity was likely Hu Jin, but I kept that thought to myself. There were bigger forces in motion now.
Still… where was Hu Jin?
Had he actually gotten himself killed?
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