Chapter 385: Beastly Ambitions |
After that first dusting of snow, winter turned out to be strangely soft this year. Even though it was the right season for heavy snowfall, the weather felt unusually mild, with warm sunlight occasionally peeking through the stormy clouds.
It was a peculiar season.
But as far as I could tell, there was no unnatural factor influencing the weather.
I stared at the sky from the roof of my library, my feet dangling over the edge.
There was something freeing about doing things that would have once been dangerous. Now I could fly. Falling to my death was no longer a real concern.
Conquering one of humanity’s most natural fears, heights, felt liberating in its own way. Especially since I used to have a very rational fear of them.
Though admittedly, flying had lost some of its novelty over time.
My thoughts, which had started drifting into the sort of contemplations that made me feel like an old man three times my physical age, were interrupted when I sensed and heard someone walking up the stairway to the library.
Not long after, Tingfeng appeared.
“Teacher,” he said, “I came to tell you that some big news has reached the sect. Though some say it is only rumor and speculation due to its nature.”
Since when did he begin giving such long-winded speeches? I was supposed to be the old soul among us.
“Please get to the point,” I told him. “I usually expect speeches like that from Jiang Yeming, and that already causes enough delays in my life.”
“The rumors say that half of the territory belonging to the Titanic Blade Sect has been burned and conquered,” Tingfeng continued. “All human civilization on that half of their territory was culled and slaughtered… and the Blazing Sun Sect had nothing to do with it.”
What? How could something like that even be possible? Did Song San develop some kind of terrifying poison?
No. Song San was too smart for that. Even if he created something capable of causing such destruction, he would keep it hidden.
Despite the shocking nature of the news, I kept my expression calm.
“Why are you the one delivering this news?” I asked, instead of immediately questioning how such an event could have happened.
“Song Song told Jiang Yeming,” Tingfeng replied. “And Jiang Yeming told me to tell you.”
What was this? Some kind of ridiculous telephone game? Couldn’t Song Song have simply come to tell me herself?
“Do we have any idea who did this to the Titanic Blade Sect?” I asked.
My first suspicion was Song San. Knowing him, it wouldn’t be surprising if he were using the frontlines to experiment with poisons. No one really knew the extent of what he was doing. The disciples under him were strangely loyal for reasons we hadn’t fully uncovered.
We had checked for mind control and found nothing. Maybe he had saved their lives at some point.
Song Song and the higher-ups likely knew more, but I hadn’t paid much attention to the frontlines recently.
I had been busy helping Wu Yan recover.
And now…
I also had a child on the way.
“People are calling them the Beast Sect,” Tingfeng explained. “A new faction. As the name suggests, they are monstrous beasts who have banded together.”
Beasts banding together?
It made sense. Humans had been hunting them too aggressively, thinking they could eliminate them entirely, like the Blazing Sun Sect once did. That way, they hoped to avoid the yearly beast waves that came every winter.
But our situation had been different. The beats had attacked us first.
Of course, from a human perspective, that justified retaliation. Still, beasts responding in this way might seem hypocritical from their side. But moral judgment only mattered when it came from a position of power.
The more worrying part of this development was that this new faction likely had at least one Nascent Soul cultivator backing them.
And there were probably many things happening behind the scenes that no one knew about yet.
“Thanks for telling me this, Tingfeng,” I said with a nod.
With his message delivered, he began to turn and leave.
I cleared my throat.
“But you should also remember that you’re a Foundation Establishment cultivator now,” I added. “You’re neither Jiang Yeming’s nor Song Song’s subordinate or messenger. Keep your cultivation status in mind, and don’t let minor errands like this distract you. You now have the authority to refuse things.”
Even though the news itself was drastic and potentially world-changing, I didn’t forget my duty as a teacher.
My job was to guide my disciples, not just in cultivation but also in navigating life.
Tingfeng nodded.
Then he turned and walked away, his expression unreadable as he descended the stairway.
Knowing him, he probably took my words seriously.
I watched his back until he disappeared from view, and my thoughts began to wander.
This entire situation with the beasts was complicated. Half of the Titanic Blade Sect’s territory had been conquered, and yet their Immortal hadn’t reacted.
Was their Immortal the same as the Blazing Sun Immortal? Completely indifferent to the things they had spent centuries building thousands of years ago?
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No. That seemed unlikely.
Immortals were incredibly individualistic. Often strange in their own ways. I doubted any two of them were truly alike.
Still…
After living for so long, perhaps they all eventually developed a certain indifference toward the world.
If that were the case, then there was a high chance the beasts also had an Immortal supporting them.
At the very least, such a figure would serve as a deterrent, ensuring that no other Immortal would be willing to step in and steamroll this new beastly army.
“It seems I’ll have to go meet some old friends,” I murmured to myself as I organized my thoughts.
…
I flew outside the sect and headed toward the farmland where I had last seen the Blazing Sun Immortal, the place where he had complained endlessly about his new wife.
Spreading my senses as I hovered in the air, I still detected nothing.
Though I could sense his newborn and his wife inside the small cottage. A thin plume of smoke drifted from a newly built chimney that hadn’t been there the last time I visited.
Even though I couldn’t sense him, he could definitely sense me.
So I floated down and landed at the edge of his land, where the farmland met the forest. Far enough away that an ordinary human eye wouldn’t be able to spot me.
Then I leaned against a damp tree, folded my arms, and waited.
Just because I couldn’t sense him didn’t mean I stopped trying. I tested a few of the new sensory techniques I had been developing recently.
That was when I suddenly heard someone cursing.
A moment later came a dull thwacking sound, like an axe biting into wood.
The strange thing was that while the sound was close enough to hear clearly, I still couldn’t sense the person producing it. My Qi detection range extended far beyond my hearing.
Did he always have to be this difficult?
I kept the thought to myself.
Following the noise, I soon came upon a young man hacking at a tree with a rather dull axe. He grunted with effort, panting heavily, sweat dripping down his forehead.
If I didn’t already know who he was, I would never assume this man was an Immortal.
He continued chipping away at the tree with very unimpressive results. After cutting about halfway through the trunk of a tree only as thick as my thigh, he finally stopped, taking deep gulps of air before dropping onto the wet ground and leaning against the axe.
“You know,” he said, staring in my direction, “you could offer some help to the elderly.”
“Do you want me to help?” I asked, genuinely confused by his theatrics.
“I swear, your generation is going to ruin this world,” he said, shaking his head with a sigh.
“If you want me to, I can help,” I repeated.
To be honest, I didn’t care at all about whatever strange play he was acting out by pretending to be a normal man.
“Even though your words sound like you’re offering help,” he said, “you clearly don’t want to. Otherwise, you would have picked up the axe by now.”
He sighed again, sounding like a relic left behind by a forgotten era. “I swear, ever since that barrier separating the continents appeared, every generation has been worse than the last.”
This guy was really something.
Every time I spoke with him, I tried to maintain a professional distance, carefully choosing my words and actions out of respect. But when dealing with someone like this, it was better to simply be myself, individualistic and unconcerned with appearances.
Talking with him wasn’t really a conversation anyway. It felt more like waiting for the other person to finish speaking… just so I could say my own thing.
“I heard something about a Beast Sect,” I said, ignoring whatever he had been rambling about and steering the conversation elsewhere. “Why didn’t the leader of the Titanic Blade Sect react when half of his territory was burned and destroyed?”
“Technically, it wasn’t really destroyed. That part is mostly rumor,” he said. “It’s more accurate to say the human population in those regions was purged.”
He scratched the back of his neck before continuing.
“I actually thought the beasts would charge straight into the Blazing Sun Sect’s territory next, since you people don’t have a Nascent Soul leader. I was quite curious to see what you’d do when that happened.”
He grinned.
“But it seems some fellow on the border frightened both men and beasts alike with his poisons. Apparently, the sacrifice required to defeat him wasn’t worth it.”
A poison user? Song San? The beasts hadn’t invaded our territory because of him?
If that was true, what the hell had he been doing at the border to scare even monstrous beasts like that?
It was also clear that the Blazing Sun Immortal had neatly avoided answering my question about what the Titanic Blade Sect’s Immortal had been doing during all of this.
But I accepted it. He clearly wasn’t going to tell me.
“Also,” he added casually, “as a friend, I should warn you not to get too involved in this conflict. The Beast Sect has four Nascent Soul beasts leading it.”
The words landed like a thunderclap.
What the hell?!
Since when did Nascent Soul cultivators become so common?
No… they had probably been hiding for a very long time.
While humans at that stage lived for around fifteen hundred years, some types of monstrous beasts could live even longer.
There was no telling how long they had been waiting.
Fuck.
Four Nascent Soul beasts.
How the hell were we supposed to deal with that?
Was humanity about to be wiped out on this continent the same way it had been on the Central Continent thousands of years ago?
And yet here we were, humans, busy killing each other while our real enemies gathered strength.
“Are the Immortals really not going to get involved?” I asked.
No matter how indifferent they were, I doubted even Immortals would want humanity wiped out entirely.
After all, without humans, what would people like the Blazing Sun Immortal even do with their strange little games?
“Meh.” He shrugged. “The Golden Dragon, the Immortal of Goldwatch City, made us an offer not to intervene directly in this conflict.”
Us? Did that mean none of the Immortals from the four great sects planned to intervene?
That golden dragon…
What exactly was he doing?
After exploring the Four Way Immortal’s tomb and gaining my mental technique, I remembered entering that dreamlike illusion and seeing the sleeping golden dragon.
What was that creature planning?
Not just this, his entire city was built on dice rolls.
Was he gathering fortune from everyone? That had always been my assumption.
As for him protecting beasts, I doubted it.
His bloodline leaned heavily toward humans. And once someone became an Immortal, they were closer to an entirely different race altogether, something beyond mortal humans or beasts.
“Hey,” the Blazing Sun Immortal said with a grin, clearly noticing my distress. “Some of those beasts didn’t even attack humans. They were just caught in the crossfire and joined the Beast Sect for protection… or revenge.”
He chuckled.
“The Golden Dragon made me feel a little bad about it. So I caved like the gullible, bleeding-heart farmer that I am.”
“Don’t lie to me,” I said, finally losing patience with his act. “What the hell are you crazy bastards planning?”
His smile widened.
He slowly stood up. His trousers and backside were soaked with mud from sitting on the wet ground, which ruined some of his intimidating presence.
But I didn’t underestimate him for even a second.
“The Age of Immortals is approaching,” he said calmly. “And it grows closer with every passing day.”
He looked toward the distant horizon.
“Many of my kind have spent millennia plotting and scheming.”
A faint gleam appeared in his eyes.
“And soon… those plans will finally bear fruit.”
