Cultivation Nerd-Chapter 323 - The Next Generation of Schemers

It was a pleasant spring day, the gentle wind brushing against our hair while the sun above cast a comfortable warmth.

Which made it all the more ridiculous that some of the most talented younger generation of the Blazing Sun Sect were gathered behind an abandoned building like common hoodlums.

The reason for this meeting was to discuss the older generation and how we could maintain our advantages without being overshadowed by the other elders.

In my view, Zun Gon becoming the new Sect Leader and possibly even advancing to Nascent Soul wasn’t such a bad deal. It would stabilize the sect and ease the growing tension with rival sects that had been probing our borders through skirmishes. A Nascent Soul cultivator would lend us weight, and no matter how things escalated, outright war was unlikely.

Yes, there were internal conflicts. Everyone wanted something: survival, resources, power. But we couldn’t get lost in our petty struggles as if they were all that mattered. The other sects were far more dangerous and wouldn’t hesitate to erase us.

As for the Blazing Sun Immortal, he believed in survival of the fittest. Even if he didn’t, other sects likely had their own immortals. He wouldn’t swoop down and crush our enemies just because he felt like it.

Song Song, Ye An, Song San, and I exchanged silent glances, waiting for someone to break the silence after our earlier conspiracy.

“As long as Liu Feng helps me with something, then I will support Song Song,” Ye An said, sighing.

Song Song nodded, knowing whatever favor I owed Ye An wouldn’t hurt our interests. By speaking first, Ye An had made the biggest move, silently forming an alliance between the three of us.

Our gazes turned toward Song San, masks of indifference concealing our intentions. But I knew he was smart enough to guess what we were thinking.

“Wow, I feel like I’m being stared down by predators,” he chuckled awkwardly behind his porcelain mask, green eyes gleaming.

If he refused, it was questionable whether he’d leave alive. Song Song and Ye An together could end him in an instant, with one using overwhelming seals and the other devastating attacks. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

I’d already sealed the space around my compound and library. My disciples and those I cared about wouldn’t fall victim to his poison sacs. I had thoroughly cleared the area after his last threat. There were no poison sacks around our homes. Song San had played us.

“What brother wouldn’t want the best for his sister?” Song San finally said, after an awkward silence. “I will also help you.”

We all nodded, reaching an unspoken, temporary agreement.

It was unlikely Ye An would secretly team up with Song San. She was smart enough to know he’d betray her, and he knew that if she removed Song Song, her next target would be him.

As the meeting concluded, Song San raised his hand. “By the way, can you show me that array you use to forcefully grow grass around your houses?”

I raised a brow. Was he trying to smooth things over with such a strange request?

“The array I had only preserved grass through harsh winters,” he explained. “But yours makes grass grow even on charred ground.”

“Come by my library anytime and I’ll give you a scroll on the Grass Array,” I said.

It wasn’t some grand secret, and I liked the thought of reviving an old and forgotten array.

…

A month passed since that eventful meeting, and spring was in full swing. Grass had spread across the grounds, and flowers bloomed where once scorched ground stood.

The season became one of rebuilding. The sect bustled with three thousand new construction workers recruited from across the lands.

It was a logistical nightmare. We had to ensure that none were spies or carrying unusual artifacts into the sect grounds. There was even a meeting devoted to the issue.

Thankfully, it wasn’t my problem. I was only the elder in charge of the inner library.

Still, one worker came to my door with parchment, ink, and pen in hand.

“Honorable Elder, we’re here to ask if you’d like any new constructions in your section of the sect,” he said with a bow. He wasn’t a cultivator, but carried himself with professionalism. His hands were rough from construction labor, yet he could read and write, which was a rare skill for such a trade.

“I want a statue of myself in front of the library,” I said, deliberately obnoxious. “Half the size of the library pagoda.”

The man nodded and carefully wrote it down.

“Do you want it made of stone, marble, or bronze? Honorable Grand Elder Zun Gon has granted permission for elders to request gold statues. Higher positions will be prioritized, of course. Forgive me, I’m ignorant as a mere mortal, I’ll have to check whether your rank is eligible for gold.” He bowed again, gaze trembling.

I ignored the fear in his eyes.

This was just a test to see how far they’d go, and what the construction crews could handle. Apparently, even requesting a statue of myself in front of the library didn’t strike them as strange. The man hadn’t even hesitated to jot it down.

Seriously, what kind of guy wanted a statue of themselves? What kind of insecure losers thought like that?

“No need, scratch off the request for the statue. I was just joking,” I said.

He erased it without hesitation or question.

Damn. Now it felt like I was bullying him by asking for something outrageous, then canceling it. This was why I usually avoided revealing my cultivation when traveling. It made normal people feel like they were walking on a tightrope when they were around me.

“Just make a moderate-sized reading hall next to the library, so students don’t need to sit on library grounds when borrowing a book,” I added.

“That can easily be done,” he nodded, writing it down. “Anything else?”

“No.”

If I needed something later, we had the local construction workers. They were also mortals, but families of cultivators, loyal and trustworthy.

Besides, with my priority being the library’s safety, I wouldn’t let just anyone inside.

“It was an honor to meet you, great elder,” the man bowed deeply, then left after I acknowledged him.

It still felt awkward having people bow to me.

Once he left, only the soft spring winds remained. Even Jiang Yeming and Tingfeng were cultivating silently today.

With foreign workers around, I kept my disciples away from outside eyes. I still wasn’t entirely sure about their backgrounds. Tingfeng was likely telling the truth, as he had a poor traditional martial foundation, and I had to teach him quite a bit of the basics. But who knew whether Jiang Yeming was lying?

Afterward, I spread my senses to find my teacher. Despite our casual relationship, I was still learning a lot from him.

He was at his small home, relaxing as usual.

I lifted off the ground, adjusting my position as I flew toward him.

In under a minute, I landed by his little shack. There he sat on the porch, laughing as he used Qi to make a leaf dance for a cat chasing it.

But even while playing, his gaze lingered on fourteen men carving marble.

I had a bad feeling.

Landing next to him, I glanced at the workmen.

“Don’t tell me that’s a statue of you,” I said.

“Yes, and it’ll stand in front of the Array Masters’ Headquarters once it’s finished,” he replied.

The Array Masters’ Headquarters was the sect’s gathering spot for array conjurers and a place where the lower ranks studied together. A grand building, to say the least.

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“You’re going to put a statue of yourself in front of the building you run?” I asked flatly.

That was like a CEO planting their own statue by the company entrance.

“Obviously! It’ll be a statue of the greatest array conjurer of our generation, me,” he said, utterly shameless.

I stared, expressionless, as my respect for him crumbled. Suddenly, I didn’t feel like bringing up what I’d come here to say.

“Why would you even want a statue of yourself?” I asked.

Cai Hu raised an eyebrow, baffled, as if I were the crazy one.

“If someone offered to make you a statue for free, what kind of passionless fool would refuse?” he asked, as though explaining the simplest truth in the world.

I sighed.

Whatever. People at his level of power always had strange quirks.

Originally, I had planned to ease into the subject, but after hearing that, it felt pointless.

He already had silencing arrays over his hut, with workers beyond their range. His arrays were higher-level than mine, so I didn’t bother adding another.

“I have a mental-type Foundation Technique,” I said, waiting for his reaction.

But Cai Hu didn't even take his eyes from the cat he was teasing, and shrugged. “I already guessed as much. But what about your element?”

“Technically, it’s lightning or at least that’s the classification,” I replied.

While there had been some study into what might be called electricity, it wasn’t widely known here.

“I honed my element more toward extreme lightning manipulation and detailed control,” I explained. “It’s unlikely my techniques will ever let me shoot lightning from my fingertips.”

“Interesting,” Cai Hu said. “Sacrificing raw power for precision. A risky gamble, but it seems to have paid off.”

“Yes. At least for now, it has,” I admitted.

He frowned, as if recalling something unpleasant. “You do have plans for your next Foundation Techniques, and how to shape them, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I nodded. “Also, despite my element being lightning, I'm trying more to reach toward the element of mind through softer lightning control, or more commonly referred to as electricity.”

“Kind of like how Zun Gon used fire to approach the element of the sun, right?” Cai Hu inquired, understanding quite well what I was trying to reach. “Still. Mind? That is one of the most dangerous elements out there, and even touching it would lead to mental instability.”

Elements like mind, infinity, life, and destruction were considered too far-reaching and would drive the user insane.

“As long as a human's true consciousness is in their soul, they should be okay,” I explained to him my hypothesis.

If I didn’t go crazy, it would mean there was a way to touch those unstable elements.

“You must have studied other-worlders quite a bit,” Cai Hu sighed. “Don't follow their examples; other-worlders are essentially just souls who crossed over, and having their consciousness attached to their soul is normal. But no one has gone far in that research for a reason. Some natural phenomena are hard to replicate and understand.”

“I-”

“Liu Feng, don't try to overreach. I will never stop you, even if your decisions lead you to your death. After all, doing that would be limiting you to never surpassing me. But it is my duty as your teacher to warn you, insanity isn't spontaneous; the element might have already begun affecting you,” he said.

His words reminded me of Wu Yan; if I hadn’t been there, she might never have noticed that her element of change was affecting her when she morphed into other people.

I had no one looking out for me like that.

But I didn’t mind failure. If I went insane, Song Song would kill me before I did things I’d regret. It would be her last favor to me as a friend.

As for trying to help me and fix the situation in that condition? I wasn’t going to burden her with such requests. She had her own life, and it would go on even if something happened to me.

We both liked to indulge each other a bit too much.

“I knew an otherworlder back in the day. He didn’t have a talent for cultivation and went around calling himself a knight and protecting the so-called innocent defenseless people,” Cai Hu said, with a calm tone in his voice. Despite his warnings, he never raised his voice or showed panic or distress. “He seemed to have it in his head that his new life was given by some goddess or the heavens, to serve and protect the innocents… he died in his late teens. Cause of death? Starvation, some hoodlum he was trying to save in the winter beat him up and stole all his food.”

“That is an interesting story,” I said.

“But the meaning is clearly lost on you,” Cai Hu sighed and shook his head, disappointed.

“Anyway, we have gone off track now, this was not what I wanted to talk about,” I said. “My only foundation technique allows me to slow down time, at least in my mind, as my body never keeps up. Do you have any ideas on how we could use this?”

I had some ideas, but I wanted to hear his thoughts and whether it would be helpful in training.

“No offense,” my teacher said, frowning, knowing that he was about to say something that might sound offensive. “But you don't have the cultivation talent to waste a technique slot on something like this. There have been cultivators with top-tier talents who could have become Nascent Soul Cultivators given enough time. But they created a technique because they needed it for something, and then they never even became Core Formation Cultivators, or lost their cultivation ability due to a failed breakthrough.”

“That is why I dare try some new things every now and then,” I smiled, knowing what he was talking about.

As someone with less talent, I should have stayed on the paved road and used established techniques that could fuse into a core technique seamlessly.

“If I take the normal road, I will have a hard time becoming a Core Formation Cultivator and even then, it is essentially impossible for me to go higher than that,” I said.

It wasn’t that I lacked mindset or comprehension; it was time. What might take Song Song a year or two would take me ten or twenty. An extreme example, maybe, but it still held true even compared to others with top-grade talent.

“But I do not see my lack of cultivation talent as a loss. If I had the talent to become a Nascent Soul Cultivator, I might have taken a less risky road and not tried new things,” I said, reminiscing a bit. “But with lacking talent, there came a freedom of choice, and even if I lost, it wasn't like it would be too devastating.”

Cai Hu stared at me and sighed, “Never in my long life have I seen anyone say that their lack of talent was a good thing.”

“I am not bragging. However, I'm happy I was born with such talents, and I will likely never reach the peak naturally. So this way it incentivises me to test things as much as I want without worrying about what could have been,” I told him.

Only a man with little to lose has few regrets if he ends up losing everything.

Sure, my power was why many around me were alive and protected, like Speedy, a monstrous beast, or Fu Yating.

But even if I lost my cultivation after failing to break through to Core Formation, Song Song would never abandon me. In fact, I might be even more useful then, since my mind wouldn’t wander toward personal cultivation and I could focus entirely on helping her.

“Well, if you're sure, then I won't get in the way of your development,” Cai Hu shrugged. “Now, let's begin our lesson with a question. What makes a Level 5 Array Conjurer different from a Level 4?”

“Obviously, the first thing that someone would think about is that they can cast stronger arrays,” I answered. “But the answer you're looking for is that they can make arrays that are bigger on the inside than the space they occupy outside.”

Though my teacher's house looked like a hut, I doubted it was really that small; it would barely fit a bed otherwise.

“Good,” he nodded. “Now, cast an array as fast as you can–”

Immediately, I used my Foundation Technique, and time around me slowed to a crawl.

Before my teacher could finish his words, a Level 4 thunder-striking array the size of a car covered both of us. I had cancelled the automatic strike function, and the barrier around us just crackled as it charged with electricity.

As I cancelled my technique and time returned to normal, Cai Hu nodded.

“Good, you are a tough opponent to defeat against people of the same stage as you. This technique will be good, even when you become a Core Formation Cultivator,” he complimented me. “Of course, that is assuming the enemy knows nothing of your technique, and has not prepared beforehand.”

“I know.”

“Otherwise, don't tell anyone about your technique. Because when it comes to techniques like this who seem undefeatable, there is always some smart ass who will find a counter to it,” he warned me.

I nodded, but Cai Hu seemed eager to continue his warnings.

“The guy or gal who finds the counter will spread it around, and it isn't like you can change a Foundation Technique. So before you know it, everyone will have an advantage against you,” he ended his warnings with a sigh.

This felt personal for him; he seemed invested in the problem.

“Teacher, I was going to suggest that this technique could be used to handle some things,” I said, fixing the sleeves of my robe. “Like enhancing my learning speed when it comes to arrays.”

If I were to use it for that, he would definitely notice, so it was better to come out with it now and appear honest.

“I agree with you to try anything you want. But as your teacher, it is my job to warn and remind you. While someone goes through different stages of cultivation, their body grows stronger and becomes more durable, even their brain is usually the same. Meaning, the brain also grows more durable,” he said, staring at me with a cold look in his eyes that left no room for rebuttal. “But that didn't mean that their brain grew more intelligent or anything like that. Or that it could handle more information in a short burst. Though it might feel to you like time is slowing down, that is just an illusion. Your brain is still under the pressure of handling all that information. You are pushing your mind, but it doesn’t actually enhance it magically; it just puts pressure on it. Going too far could cause lasting damage. It would be a shame if my disciple lost his ability to speak or anything like that.”

That long rant made his worry clear and exactly what he thought of using the technique to speed up learning.

He said he wouldn’t stop me from doing whatever I wanted with cultivation, but he gave plenty of reasons not to.

“So, moderation is key,” I tested the grounds by saying this.

“No,” my teacher shook his head. “I'm saying that this is quite dangerous, and you might not get hurt since this is your foundation technique. Your foundation technique would simply enhance learning speed, rather than your talent with arrays, so the endpoint would be the same. Why rush things needlessly?”

I nodded at his reasoning, but he was wrong about the talent part. It might not be a direct enhancement, but observing in extreme slow motion was bound to make learning easier.

“Thanks for the warning, I agree with a lot of what you said, and will try to be adequately careful with it,” I gave him a politician-like answer. “But would still like to test this out and see how I advance.”

Cai Hu nodded, not dimming my curiosity despite the risk, "Either way, you should also set up an alarm so you don't get too lost in time and stay using your technique for too long.”

I nodded, deciding to try that. There was a good chance that much of my training with it would have to be done alone, since my teacher was too worried about my safety and wouldn’t let me push too hard.

Perhaps Song Song should be around, since she was the only person I knew who would approve of this. But... no, I shelved the idea as soon as I thought of it.