Cultivation Nerd-Chapter 324 - Gathering The Crew

After that ordeal with my teacher, I flew over to Song Song’s mansion. The place was an eyesore as always, with the white walls glaring against the surrounding greenery. But now it had a new addition: a marble statue in her yard, standing just before the entrance.

I landed, looked around, but found no one despite sensing her presence on the way here. My gaze drifted back to the statue.

It depicted her holding a marble sword with a crimson gem in its hilt, standing atop jagged stone. Where the eyes should have been, two flawless diamonds gleamed.

I had to admit, it was well-made.

“Why do you have something like this?” I asked aloud. No answer came. Only the wind rustled the grass. “And did it have to be marble? I sometimes take detours just to avoid seeing your house.”

“Yes, perhaps gold would have been better,” Song Song suddenly whispered in my ear, resting her chin on my shoulder.

As expected, she was using the concealing aspect of her technique. With her soul waves dulled, she was impossible to sense, even while staring right at her.

I shrugged her off and turned toward her. “Anyway, are you bored enough to sign up for some good old adventure soon?” 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

“Sign up?” She frowned, eyeing my hands as if expecting documents.

The phrase didn’t translate well here, but thirty years of speaking habits were hard to shake.

“Not literally. I mean, join me on an expedition. Your brother and I discovered something new,” I explained.

“Oh… So we’re finally getting rid of that stain?” Song Song asked.

“No, not technically.” I met her deep blue eyes, eyes that made the diamonds on her statue look dull. “But if the opportunity presents itself, there’s no reason to save him either. Also–”

“Well, I expect you to have done your due diligence. Spare me the boring details,” she cut me off with a shrug. “Just remember, my brother’s specialty is handling groups. If he poisons the entire area, I might not be able to protect you. You wouldn’t even have a chance to resist.”

“Obvious enough. I’ll keep it in mind,” I replied.

After some small talk with her, asking what Fu Yating was cooking for dinner, which I had no clue about, I left to recruit the next member.

This one was different. She was never home. I flew beyond the Blazing Sun Sect’s protective barriers, rising until I drifted among the clouds.

There, I found her.

Ye An. A woman with dark hair streaked by white strands. She liked staying above the clouds. From what I could tell, she didn’t spend that time cultivating, so who knew what she did up here.

“Yes,” she said before I could speak.

“Do you even know what I was going to ask?” I asked.

“Song Song is too aggressive and protective, so I can’t spy on her as she’d notice immediately. But you… you’re another person of interest. I like keeping an eye on you.”

So she just admitted to stalking people for fun. Creepy. Then again, cultivators with sharp eyes and ears were perfectly suited for the hobby of a stalker.

“My opinion of you just plummeted,” I said.

“Thankfully, I don’t care about your opinion,” Ye An smirked.

What a troublesome woman.

Still, she agreed to join without much fuss.

…

A week later, we gathered at the sect’s new front gate. Which was rebuilt again, taller, more intimidating, engraved with golden runes, and reinforced with dozens of arrays.

I breathed in the fresh scent of spring grass as the two guards stared at our group with confusion.

Our lineup: Song San, Ye An, Song Song, me, the local regressor Jiang Yeming, and our resident sword freak, Tingfeng.

I’d considered bringing Wu Yan along, since she desperately needed more experience. But in the end, I left her behind. I didn’t want her condition exposed, and Song San was too tricky to risk it.

Song San also brought an extra member: a masked elder at Foundation Establishment. Unfortunately for our poisonous friend, he wasn’t popular in the sect. Few wanted to be seen with him, and those who did seemed to have adopted this new “mask fashion” to hide their faces.

Song San glanced at my group, which included two Core Formation powerhouses, and coughed awkwardly.

“That is quite the team,” he said, then looked at Jiang Yeming and Tingfeng. “You must be the disciples I’ve heard much about.”

I’d only mentioned them once. He definitely hadn’t “heard much.” I’d made sure to keep them out of the public eye until they were ready.

“Yes, I know, they’re much less impressive than you expected. Can we move on now?” Song Song said flatly.

She clearly wasn’t in the mood for her brother’s chatter. Still, why did my poor students have to catch stray shots? They’d done nothing wrong.

Ye An stared, eyes half-lidded, her expression screaming boredom. When she noticed me watching, she added a theatrical sigh to drive the point home.

“Okay, stay close, I’ll handle transportation,” I said.

Everyone gathered in, though they all kept a deliberate distance from Song San and the elder he had brought. I clapped my hands, summoning a square jade barrier that enclosed us all.

The barrier lifted off the ground, carrying us skyward. At the same time, I shaped jade chairs inside so everyone could sit.

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It was basically a xianxia-style airplane.

I accelerated until we blazed across the sky like a green meteor, clouds parting in our wake as we skirted the edge of a sonic boom.

Even though this method was slower than a Core Formation cultivator flying alone, it let us stay together and discuss last-minute plans. We weren’t in a rush anyway.

Still, judging from the way Song Song, Ye An, and Song San kept glaring at one another, maybe this hadn’t been the best idea.

“So, any new insights into the poison, Song San?” I asked, trying to cut through the tension.

“No, not really,” he said, though he produced a stack of notes from his storage ring and handed them to me. “I did, however, develop a few new poisons from that strain and researched how it could have evolved in case we deal with more powerful versions of that poison. I also prepared a couple of dozen general antidotes that should handle most versions. Check pages eight and twelve, they’re the dangerous ones.”

I skimmed where he indicated. He had essentially taken traits from different venoms and poisons, combining them into the nastiest possible strains.

“While the antidotes can counter most versions, some of the advanced developments are simply too dangerous. Still, the antidotes should slow things enough until I can intervene,” he explained.

“This is solid work,” I said as he distributed vials of antidote. Song Song eyed hers suspiciously, but I ignored her and addressed the others. “I also researched the local history of the area we’re visiting.”

“Oh?” Song San perked up. “What did you find?”

“Well, the region was never particularly important, and the records are patchy. Some things simply weren’t written down.”

That was the problem with cultivator historians: you never knew if records were erased deliberately or if nothing of interest happened.

I had also checked civilian sources, but most commoners of that era were illiterate, and again, nobody wrote much down.

“There used to be a small kingdom a couple of millennia ago. That’s about it,” I shrugged.

“Really? Anything strange about them?” Song San pressed.

“The country was ruled by a cult. Over generations, the royal family grew lazy, their cultivation talent dwindled, and eventually the cult overthrew them. Not long after, the entire place was destroyed by a beast wave,” I explained.

Song San rubbed the chin of his mask thoughtfully.

“During that time, the Blazing Sun Sect still existed. Why would they allow a kingdom to rise within their territory? The only explanation is that the kingdom had a Nascent Soul cultivator backing it or someone powerful enough for the sect to ignore.”

I didn’t agree, but I chose not to argue.

“Any descriptions of the cult?” Jiang Yeming asked, drawing everyone’s attention. She didn’t back down under their stares, though her frown deepened.

Did she know something about this place? I’d need to keep an eye on her.

“It seemed to be some kind of hedonistic cult, focused on free love and indulgence,” I said.

“So, just an orgy city,” Ye An deadpanned.

I shrugged.

It wasn’t far off. During my travels across Blazing Sun Sect territory, I had come across plenty of explicit carvings and murals. Maybe those cults were connected, or perhaps it was just a cultural trend of the era.

Either way, the cult clearly hadn’t been significant enough to earn a proper place in the history books. From what I could tell, there were no human sacrifices or deranged rituals involved.

Just depravity, indulgence, and endless, nasty entanglements.

…

It took almost twenty-four hours to arrive at our destination, even while traveling faster than most commercial planes.

This continent was massive.

When we finally reached the rocky ravine, no longer blanketed in snow as it had been last time, I brought the square barrier down. Everyone set foot on the ground.

Howling winds rushed from the more bottomless chasms, carrying only a creepy sound of the breeze whistling between the rocks. No trace remained of the blood or carnage we had left here.

I half-expected the corpses we had thrown into the ravine to sour the air with rot, but there was nothing. No spring grass, no flowers to freshen the dryness. Only bare rock, the soil too poor to grow anything. Some moss clung stubbornly between the stones, but that was all.

I walked to the edge of the ravine and peered into the abyss. Even with my enhanced vision, I couldn’t see the bottom.

Song Song joined me, equal parts curious and bored.

“What do you see?” I asked.

She shook her head. “It’s too deep. I can’t even see the end.”

That was… doubly surprising.

I nodded and spread my palms. An array pulsed outward, a ripple of Qi mapping the ravine like echolocation. Every point it touched revealed itself to me. I closed my eyes, feeling it all.

The ravine was vast. A few dozen hybrid beasts lurked below, spider-legged things like the ones we had slain before. None of them seemed strong or Qi sensitive enough to notice my probing.

“Okay, I’m going down,” I said steadily. The weight of the unknown was quite exciting.

I stepped off the ledge and plummeted. Wind roared past, tearing at my robes as the abyss swallowed me. I spread my arms and stretched my senses to their limit.

Sight failed almost immediately, and a thick darkness consumed everything.

Yet I felt it all: Qi currents whispering against my skin, vibrations in the air, the oppressive silence of what lay below.

Another ripple joined me. Song Song had leapt after, her presence sharp and vast. Her Qi brushed faintly against mine, a familiar pressure chasing me into the depths.

Just as I closed my eyes and got ready to erect an array, a sharp crack shattered the silence. The wall buckled. Stone burst outward as a monstrous figure erupted through, and I "saw" the slick segmented body of an earthworm, its flesh glistening wetly.

But it wasn’t its size that froze me. It was its face.

A grotesque human mouth stretched across its head, lips peeling back to reveal far too many teeth. The beast lunged, foul breath rushing over me as it snapped its maw wide enough to swallow me whole. Its body was as thick as a bus, its length vanishing into the shadows as if it went on for miles.

I lashed out with a storm of wind blades, each one screaming through the dark. They carved deep gashes across its flesh, blood spraying in thick torrents that painted the ravine walls.

Before the monster could even shriek, Song Song blurred past me. A sword of condensed blood flared in her grip, its edge glowing crimson. With one decisive swing, she cleaved through the worm’s neck. The head tore free with a wet crunch. The corpse convulsed violently before crashing down in a quaking heap.

I didn’t linger to watch. Qi wrapped around me, slowing my descent until my boots touched down lightly on the blood-soaked earth.

Song Song landed beside me, her aura still rippling with crimson echoes. That was when I noticed it: a strange green mist clinging to the bottom of the ravine like stagnant swamp gas. It coiled low, shifting faintly as though alive. The acrid stench burned my throat with every breath.

Nothing stirred here. No rodents, no insects. Only silence and decay.

I clasped my hands and summoned an array. Jade lines shimmered into a translucent barrier, pushing back the noxious haze. The mist hissed against it like acid on steel, but the formation held. I reinforced it carefully, ensuring neither Song Song nor I inhaled further poison.

Song San arrived next, far less graceful. His hand scraped the ravine wall, sparks flying as his nails ground into stone. The cliffside bore deep gouges by the time his boots struck ground, leaving the faint scent of scorched rock.

“Oh, there seem to be some harmful toxins in the air,” Song San remarked casually, as though discussing the weather. He inhaled deeply, and the mist funneled into his lungs. The poisonous haze hissed and writhed like smoke drawn into a vacuum before vanishing.

When he exhaled, the air came out clean, the fog thinning as though erased.

“Thanks. Now let's go exploring,” I said firmly, adjusting the array around Song Song and myself. “And hopefully find something interesting.”