Cultivation Nerd-Chapter 335 - Liar

The soundwave raced toward me, the air around it rippling and twisting, while lightning from my own array rained down as I breathed normally.

Despite the somber weight in my chest, I couldn’t help but feel… happy. These Foundation Techniques were fascinating, each one felt unique, personalized. Dangerous, yes, but also deeply interesting.

I clapped my hands, fingers interlocking as I raised my gaze to the descending bolt. It was so bright it consumed my vision.

A shame to end things this quickly. But I had no choice.

I drew a sharp breath and seized the vast Qi reservoir stored at the crown of the array. The storm convulsed above, boiling clouds whipping into a frenzy as I bent them to my will.

Then the sky split apart.

Dozens of jagged bolts tore free, cascading downward in a furious storm, violet arcs blazing so bright they drowned the night. At their head, like a sovereign leading its legion, a colossal bolt descended like a hungry beast, ready to annihilate everything.

I stood at the center, daring it to strike.

But before the storm could swallow me, another array sparked into life. A smaller, spherical construct of glowing purple lines encased me, its rings rotating in orbit. Each cycle drew in more energy until the very air trembled with the charge.

The first bolt slammed into the sphere. It spun faster, greedily devouring the current. Each strike layered more power inside until the rings blurred into a vortex of light. Then, with a single hand seal, I stopped it dead.

The sudden halt expelled all that stored energy outward in a colossal discharge. A shockwave burst free like an electromagnetic pulse, screaming across the battlefield faster than sound, rattling bones and shredding Qi barriers alike.

The sphere wasn’t a shield anymore. It had become a resonant chamber, a speaker cone amplifying vibration into pure devastation.

This was technically an array. What should I name it? A thought for a later time.

It came to me in that split second: lightning was current, violent but aimless. Sound was a vibration carried through a medium. If sound could shatter walls, why not use lightning to forge a vibration strong enough to break it? Rotation to trap and build charge, sudden stillness to unleash it as a crude bridge between silence arrays, vibration theory, and lightning’s raw force.

Not elegant. Not refined. But effective.

A thunderous boom ripped the night apart, sharp enough to split the air like glass. The shockwave devoured the oncoming sound attack, tearing its vibrations into nothingness before they reached me.

And it didn’t stop there. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

The wave surged outward, hammering into the outer barrier. My Lightning Array groaned under the stress, its structure fracturing as violet arcs scattered in all directions before fading into the dark.

A towering cloud of dust billowed up, swallowing the battlefield in a choking haze. For a heartbeat, only the crackle of dying sparks cut the silence as violet arcs rained down and winked out.

I lifted a hand; obedient winds roared to life and scattered grit and ash until the scene lay bare again.

The Sound Elder stood at the center, her fragile barrier shimmering as it cradled both herself and the Leaf Elder. Their robes were torn, faces grim, but they were unscathed.

Farther off, the Flutter Elder drifted out of the trembling air. The shockwave had tossed his body like a rag, bending limbs unnaturally, yet somehow he was unharmed. He descended with an eerie grace, his form righting itself as if the blast had nothing on him.

It was like trying to use a hammer to crush a shirt - much harder than breaking rocks with it.

Now that only piqued my interest in the Flutter Elder’s element even more. Strange techniques were the most interesting.

I wasn’t one for human experimentation, and we’d burned the bridges long ago for him to tell me anything willingly. I preferred learning on my own rather than forcing it. Torturing him was also out of the question.

“This plan has turned into an absolute failure,” the Leaf Elder sighed, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth. “We can’t take him on at all.”

I sighed too, more out of relief than pride, though part of me mourned the array I’d just ruined. I’d optimized my techniques to be more Qi-efficient, but that last discharge had gutted me. I had about ten percent of my Qi left. That had cost more than I expected.

“If I were in your place, I’d still press harder,” I told them. “You can sense my Qi reserves. I’d be a tough nut to crack for the Sound and Flutter Elders.”

“This young generation is truly made of monsters,” the Leaf Elder muttered.

At that, the Sound and Flutter Elders turned their backs and fled. I didn’t bother stopping them, especially not with the Leaf Elder holding the line. He stayed behind, buying time for his subordinates to escape. A good leader.

When the two were gone into the trees and were no longer in my line of sight, I faced the Leaf Elder again.

“You should know they won’t be able to escape after the ruckus they caused,” I said.

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“You’d be right if everyone were out to get them,” he replied. “But they’re waiting, waiting to see if we succeed, and if it's feasible to take a chunk of meat from the sect and then leave. If you fail, others may follow our example. Not many will stand in their way.”

I looked at the corpses of the other elders, what was left of them, mangled by that electromagnetic pulse.

Then I stared at the Leaf Elder and called, “You're quite the cold-hearted man.”

Cheap tactics like that didn’t seem to faze someone with his experience. But it cost nothing to try.

“I want to break down and cry, they were my friends and we have celebrated each other's successes and mourned the losses together. But we have also gone through many life-and-death situations together, and we have had many friends die along the many missions, expeditions, and battles we have experienced,” he said, shaking his head. “Each mission we went on, we knew there was a chance of death. Even this one… sadly, this turned out more lethal than expected.”

His voice stayed even as he held my gaze. He was trying to read me and searching for anything that might save them.

“I have a couple of Earth Grade Techniques I developed myself,” he began, not looking like he wanted to fight at all. “Will you let my two friends go if I give you these? You can even have my life as an extra on the offer.”

“Why go through such extreme means? Are you not confident you can hold me back?” I asked.

“No, not at all,” he admitted. “I can probably hold you back longer here by talking than I ever could in a fight.”

His Qi reserves were nearly full, yet he was bargaining.

“Have some confidence,” I told him, drawing my jade daggers in a reverse grip as I charged.

“If we knew better, the best chance we had at escaping was when we first saw you, and then immediately split in different directions,” he said.

He was wrong. At the start, they’d been close enough to the library for me to use its Level 6 arrays to envelop and trap them all. I didn’t tell him that. Instead, I offered, “Well, anything is possible, and nothing is guaranteed.”

By the time the words left my mouth, I was within arm’s reach. He hadn’t reacted. I swung the dagger and decapitated him with a single clean strike.

His head flew up, but instead of blood, green leaves spilled out.

The trees trembled; leaves swirled, forming a protective dome around us, like a leafy domain that filled the ground with greenery. Tendrils of leaves lunged for me, so I levitated a foot off the ground. Any leaves that reached were shredded by wind blades.

From the leafy ground six feet ahead, a human-sized tendril rose. The Leaf Elder’s body reformed. Dozens more rose, coalescing into clones of the elder.

Leaf clones, that was an impressive trick. It was hard to tell the difference between the real body and the clones, since he had covered the whole ground and area around us with his Qi.

They brandished condensed leaf swords and surged forward like a green tidal wave.

Both of my hands blurred as I began using the Falling Moon Claw Technique like a machine gun, and countless wind blades shot out, butchering, bisecting, cutting in half, and dismembering the leaf clones.

Suddenly, from within the swirling barrage of leaves, one broke free. A single blade of green, gleaming brighter than all the rest. It pulsed with compressed Qi, so sharp that it created a whistling sound as it cut through the air, and shot straight toward my heart like an arrow of light.

I crossed my jade daggers before me, bracing for impact. I expected a trick like a curve or a swerve past my defenses, but it didn’t. The leaf crashed head-on against my weapons, ringing like steel on steel. The force hurled me backward, my levitation broke, and my feet dragged harshly across the earth, carving twin furrows two yards long before I ground to a halt.

The Qi drained from the leaf in an instant, its brilliance fading as it fluttered harmlessly toward the dirt. Still, I wasn’t about to take chances. With a flick of my blades, I shredded it into confetti before it touched the ground.

But the assault wasn’t over. Waves of Qi-imbued leaves surged forward like a green tide, each one sharpened into a miniature blade.

I met them with daggers flashing, unleashing a storm of wind blades. Hundreds tore through the tide, cutting leaves to ribbons in a spray of emerald fragments.

As the storm waned, I dismissed my jade daggers and clapped my hands.

A crimson barrier erupted outward, walls of solid flame sealing the leafy grounds in a blazing dome. The air thickened instantly, the heat crushing down like the breath of a furnace. Leaves shriveled, curled, and ignited, the ground becoming a sea of fire.

From a smoldering heap, something shifted. A charred body staggered upright, smoke rising from scorched flesh. Burned and trembling, yet still alive.

The Leaf Elder. His ruined body clung stubbornly to life, eyes burning with a will that fire could not consume.

Flame-forged chains lashed outward from the barrier, coiling around him with brutal finality. They tightened, searing deep, as I raised my hand. A razor-thin wind blade shimmered into being and cut him clean through.

Those chains alone could have halted a Core Formation for a heartbeat, long enough to deny them any chance to react. For a Foundation cultivator, it was already over.

The elder’s body collapsed, igniting fully as it hit the ground. Yet his gaze never wavered. Through smoke and flame, his eyes locked on mine.

“Did I at least make you go all out?” he rasped.

“Yes,” I answered quietly. “Your years of training, cultivating, and fighting were not in vain.”

His lips twisted into a bitter grimace.

“Liar,” he spat, before the fire claimed him, and his body stilled at last.

I examined the Leaf Elder’s corpse, making sure he was truly dead.

He had been sharp, smarter than most of the others, a good leader. But he’d let himself get dragged down by weak friends, wasting his talent trying to pull them up. Admirable, maybe, but fatal. Alone, he might have escaped.

The thought lingered as my fingers slipped beneath my sleeve, closing around the cool surface of a ruby token. With a flick of will, I poured Qi into it. The token flared, crimson light spreading like molten veins.

At once, a Level 6 defensive array roared to life around me. Translucent walls snapped into place, interlocking sigils crawling across the ground in precise layers until they sealed me in a dense cocoon. The earth trembled with their weight.

But I wasn’t casting this myself. Standing so close to the library meant I could borrow its grand array. My teacher’s work, not mine, I merely channeled it with the control tablet.

A heartbeat later, a white light slammed into the barrier. The impact shuddered through the shield, shaking the sigils until they buzzed, their lines bending under the weight. For an instant, it felt like the strike might break through.

I frowned.

That attack had been too strong.

I’d half-expected the Flutter or Sound Elder to return, waiting for the perfect moment to strike, right after victory, when my guard was lowest. With cloaks that could hide their Qi, an ambush wouldn’t have been strange. Maybe even an eighth elder, lurking unseen until now.

However, this was a Core Formation-level attack.