"Just what is all this noise all about?" I muttered as we finally reached the entrance of the garden, a process that took us much more ti than I expected when we first floated the idea of returning.
"Maybe they are running so sort of an exercise?" Claire suggested, clearly racking her brain in an attempt to co up with sothing plausible enough for our mutual satisfaction. "Or maybe they just got angry we were gone for so long, so they ca to believe we ran off sowhere or sothing?"
I chuckled a bit when hearing this.
"After all the shit that happened back at the feast… I don't really think they care about all that much. You, on the other hand…"
I put on a pondering look on my face as I took a step to the side and looked Claire up from the top of her head to her shoes.
"Yeah, I would be freaking out if such a beauty were to go missing too," I stated with a face as serious as I could make it, only to then laugh out when Claire first grinned before throwing her elbow into my side.
"Why do you tease like that?" she asked in a teary voice, only to wrap both of her hands around my arm as she snuggled up to my side. "You can be damn sure both Dad and Mom would be freaking out if you were to go missing too," she stated with an enviable confidence… confidence I couldn't really share.
Chihiro was one thing, for I had already proved my usefulness to him. I revealed just how massive my inventions could be, easily capable of rocking what everyone thought to be perfectly stable foundations of what cultivation is and how people were supposed to approach it. Leila, on the other hand…
"Well, there's only one way to find out for sure, isn't there?" I asked, only to move forward and press the garden door open…
Only to see a whole ass crowd of cultivators gathered in a half-circle around the garden's entrance. They were all ard with swords, spears, and all sorts of other cold weapons. And while at first, no one appeared to notice the two of us leaving the garden…
"Here they co!" soone shouted, as if casting a spell onto the formation with how all of those cultivators aid their weapons in our direction, ready to…
Ready to accept our charge? Ready to contain us within the garden's entrance?
In all honesty, save for them pointing their weapons in our direction, I couldn't really tell what their aim was.
But just them pointing their blades at Claire was enough for .
'You golden bastard, wherever the fuck you are right now, you better co here right now…'
My eyes started to physically hurt when I felt quite a number of spiritual discharges land at the anchors located within them.
This pain, however, was rely the statent of just how intensely I spun my cultivation, given how it reached the level of condensation so impossibly high, it could directly interact with matter.
A level of mana concentration I'd only ever seen once before, right back when my machinery at the factory pretty much gave birth to a whole new consciousness!
"What is the aning of this, I wonder," I spoke out loud, the energy of spiritual law brimming in every fiber of my being, only waiting to be released the mont any of those fuckers gave a reason to do it.
"Stay as you are!" the cultivator from smack-dab in the middle of the crowd shouted. "Don't you dare move, you monster!"
'Huh?'
Even with all the thinking we did to figure out just what this noise could be, to be called a monster pretty much right as we left…
Still, just to be sure, I turned to take a look over my shoulder, expecting to see so sort of entity standing behind the two of us. Yet, there was nothing there. Not a soul, not a monster, nor a spiritual-based spirit. Just the very sa entrance to the cultivation garden that we had just left.
Disappointed, I turned my head back before locking my gaze on the sa man that had just dared to call a monster.
"I don't recognize you, aning you are either one of the important people that got scolded by the patriarch for trying to fuck with or soone unimportant altogether," I stated, caring not if I antagonized the man or not. "So, for once in your life, make yourself fucking useful and bring soone capable to explain just what the hell is going on."
My words instantly caused a commotion in the crowd. Yet, for better or worse, none of the ard cultivators took a step forward to challenge either of the two of us.
"That's really weird…" Claire muttered, still hanging on to my arm as if it was the only thing she was certain of in the whole, wide world. "This looks like… No, that's not it…"
A myriad of thoughts flashed through her head, a feeling I distinctively recognized through our bond, as she tried to match the current situation to any of the possible explanations she had either heard of or could co up with herself.
"I think…" A mont later, I felt sothing click inside of her mind. "I think they might be under the impression that sothing happened to us back in the garden," she stated, watching how people ran both towards the crowd of the cultivators and away from it, indicating there was so sort of communication going on.
"How far into the garden did the two of you go?!" Again, the leader of the crowd shouted.
Yet, rather than answering, I rely gave him a stink-eye before rolling my eyes and turning my gaze back to Claire, not interested in the slightest in confessing everything to so random nobody.
"Answer or die!" the man scread out again…
Pretty much right as I felt the distinctive, familiar feeling at my fingertips.
The feeling I'd gotten only once in its full force, back when the golden entity gave its visions to warn of the trouble heading for the factory.
Right now, however… things were not as simple.
"Tim?" Noticing that sothing was wrong, Claire leaned forward to take a closer look at my face.
"SEE?! THEY REFUSE TO OBLIGE! ON MY MARK!" the crowd's leader continued to shout sothing in the distance, only warranting a click of the tongue from Claire before she put her attention right back to .
"Can you buy a mont?" I asked as I already delved into this strangely familiar feeling. A feeling I had experienced only once in the past… yet one I found exceedingly similar to the spiritual law we cultivated back in the garden!
'Could it be, that golden entity wasn't ford out of the spirituality itself, but from the power of its laws?' I thought, only to then squint my eyes as I delved even deeper into the feeling, only to recognize more and more of the familiar parts.
This golden presence… It too was extrely hard to notice, insanely thin for the power it held, and…
'And who am I to say if it isn't one level deeper than the spiritual law? Or two levels? Or a dozen of them?'
Now that we had found out that spiritual energy was rely the most obvious layer to the Qi, who could say how many layers of it there were in reality?
'Or,' I gulped my saliva down as yet another possibility appeared in my mind, 'who is there to say there can't be more kinds of spiritual energy, each with a distinct set of spiritual laws, each with different deeper levels to it?'
"Tim…" Claire's whisper brought back to reality, forcing to recognize how this was, quite possibly, the worst ti to think about the depth of cultivation and its foundations.
We had a whole group of ard and hostile cultivators pointing their weapons at us, after all!
Raising my eyes, I realized those cultivators… They'd started to march up, tightening the half-circle with each step they made.
Now, they no longer wished to just contain us in place. Right now, they were out for our blood.
"It seems our vacation here will run short, dear," I spoke out as I took a step forward and started to warm myself up, strangely confident now that I could feel the distant touch of the golden presence at my fingertips. "And since we don't seem to have much of a choice, I apologize if I make things hard for you and your mom from this point on," I stated, daring not to look back.
Those people pointed their weapons at Claire. And while that much I could still find it in myself to forgive given so sort of extre circumstances… Now that they started to close in? Their weapons getting closer and closer to Claire's fair skin?
I stretched my head to the sides, all the way to the point where I heard my neck start to crack. I then focused on the inner flow of spiritual law within my flesh, the way my core discharged it to random anchor points rooted in my flesh, several thousand tis per instant… all the way to the point where I turned sideways toward the nearest cultivator in the formation, pushing my foot to the back as I lowered my center of mass and raised my fists, defaulting to the one and only thing I knew better than everything else.
'With all that newfound power of ours, I wonder…' I thought, squinting my eyes as I chased all the spare thoughts aside, pulling all of my focus, all of my attention just to this extrely familiar sensation deep at the core of my body. Read new chapters at empire
'I wonder, just how nice punching out would feel?'
The cultivators closed in another step, now rely two to three ters away.
I took a deep breath. From behind, Claire had already coated in a protective layer of her own Qi, her face twisting in a rage I'd never witnessed in her eyes before.
And as I opened my squinted eyes wide, I felt the thread. The sa thread I had pulled on thousands upon thousands of tis back when I kept striking the wooden target over and over again with not a single thought in my head. And as I ntally pulled on that trigger-thread, fire exploded in my veins as all of my muscles fell in line, springing my entire body up as I sent my fist forth…
"STOP!"
A powerful, domineering shout filled the entire field… only for my body to freeze when all of the cultivators, all of the possible targets for the fury of my fist…
All of them suddenly flew backward, as if soone tied them to a rope connected to the payload of a cannon they had just shot.
Right the next mont, a figure descended from the skies…
Unfortunately, as they landed right in the spot the leader of the cultivators' crowd was in just a mont ago, they provided my eyes with just the right target my strained body was looking for.
And so, no longer in control of my own body, I could do nothing but watch as my fist flew forward, only to land squarely against the palm of Chihiro's hand, which he desperately, and at the very last mont, raised up to intercept the attack.
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