Chapter 314 - Surging Spirit Art (V)

Lao Shun was shaking as he held the somewhat disheveled tome in his hands, his eyes glued to the pages.

It was impossible.

That was his first and last thought, yet with each page, it was as though some invisible force was taking a blade to his convictions and cutting them, slowly but surely.

It shouldn't be possible, yet the truth was staring him in the eyes--that strange, odd, perverse man had pulled from the dimension of nothing-nowhere an art that, if ever presented publicly, would cause every single power within the world to immediately go to the war of extinction for it.

How?

Just how?

And... where? Where did both the art as well as he come from?

He simply (and rather unceremoniously) came to his room, dropped a tome in front of him, and just... left. As though he were giving him some worthless piece of candy and not one of the most remarkable martial arts Lao Shun had ever seen in his life.

With each new page he flipped, his blood stirred further and further; it wasn't just the matter of miracle, it was the matter of seeing the world in an utterly different way.

Terms and phrases and connections that no alchemist had ever made about the human body were almost self-evident within the art, broken down to such finite details that, within ten pages, Lao Shun felt a headache--he'd never failed to learn any healing art he'd see once, and yet... he knew he would need at least a couple of decades to master this one, if not more than that.

He took a deep breath, his arms still shaking, and closed the tome; it wasn't an exaggeration to say that if this art became public, Alchemy Tower would hunt that kid down with all their might and kill him while destroying the art in the process.

While Alchemists concocted all manner of pills, the truth was that the majority of annual revenue came from the healing pills and outright healing other people. In the second place were Qi Replenishing Pills, but the healing acts and pills accounted for almost forty percent of all annual income.

Even the distant threat of it suddenly disappearing would be enough to kick those old monsters from their deep tombs into action.

Lao Shun trembled at the thought of such a thing occurring, though he had less than no intention of starting it. He hardly loved the Tower or even considered it his home, and ever since he hit his plateau both as a cultivator and an alchemist, he had gotten... bored.

Every day was the same.

Every request one he'd done a thousand times before.

All the same faces.

All the same questions.

All the same places.

It was all the same, repeated into oblivion. The dullness had not just crept into his heart, but it had taken over his entire soul. Despite his perfect recall, he could seldom string together an hour worth of memories over the past fifty years, as there was nothing new that happened.

All until he came across that slightly detestable face in the basement of some no-name clan in the city nobody's ever heard of. Ever since, his life was all but dull; not only was he surrounded by monsters improving at a rate that would have even those Holy Lands drooling, the star all those monsters carefully orbited was the most monstrous of them all.

Extinct alchemy recipes, martial arts nobody's ever heard of before, and something intangible that Lao Shun couldn't even comprehend just yet: whenever he was around the man, for some reason, he cultivated faster. He recovered faster. It was as though he were a walking world tree feeding the world with his mere existence.

A heretical thought entered his mind once or twice, but he dismissed it: that the man was a projection of Dao itself.

But that wasn't the case. He wasn't a man of Dao--rather, it was as though he was the very antithesis to it.

Lao Shun put away the tome and left the room, seeing that the kids had gathered for breakfast. They were all excitedly chattering precisely about the art, sharing insights and ideas on it, though it was clear that none quite understood the sheer ramification of it.

"Ah, Senior, welcome! Did you rest well?" the oldest girl of the group (and the most sane one, by Lao Shun's estimates) greeted him.

"Hm," he nodded. "I'd like to offer you some advice."

"Of course, Senior! Everyone, shut up and listen."

"..." he eyed them for a moment before speaking. "Never, ever, ever tell anyone outside this group about that art. Even if there is a dagger in your heart, your lips must stay glued."

"Ooh! Master Alchemist, Master gave you the art as well?! That means... he he, can, can you share what you've learned with us?" the young girl said with a rather bright smile. Lao Shun was about to sight before the oldest girl interjected.

"You don't need to worry, Senior," she said. "We would all rather betray the Heavens themselves than our Master."

He was just about to reprimand her for heresy when he looked at them--those eyes were shorn of fear and terror, and were full of conviction. It wasn't a mere hearsay, no: they genuinely were willing to do precisely that.

Betray the Origin itself over a single man.

... he knew, long before today, just how devoted these kids were. He watched them, over and over, after all. But, even so, he'd severely underestimated it.

And he knew it wasn't even because that kid gave them exclusive martial arts or cultivation methods; Lao Shun had a feeling that even if the man never gave them anything, they'd still hold that level of respect for him. To some extent, he even understood why.

He'd seen many Master-Disciple relationships in his life, but the way Lu Qi interacted with the kids was completely different than any other: rather than treating them as beneath him, little tidings that have to be taught, he treated them... with respect. With kindness. With a level of equality that some would even think made them his peers.

The kids, when around him, were exactly the same as they were outside of that; they never had to pretend, to stifle themselves, to feign being something they were not. They were allowed to exist as they were, with every breath they took.

To laugh.

To cry.

To mock.

To jest.

Even when they made a joke at his expense, or made a strange comment, they never held fear that he would become mad enough to hurt them.

A distant yearning temporarily woke up within himself; what would his life have been like if his Master was like Lu Qi?

Nobody knew--certainly not him. He merely smiled and sat down, deciding to simply go with the flow.

"Ho ho, so you are interested in my insights? Well, it goes like this..."