Chapter 58: Chapter 56: They are watching
Floating in the green realm was incredibly boring, each second resembled any other, nothing happened. Except when her student threw stuff inside the Sky Poison Pearl and did weird things with the pearls abilities. She'd never understand why he kept throwing in weird molds in big quantities, decomposing them, only to throw most of it away and keep only the weird white powder he used to heal people.
How did he even discover that it worked? He did this kind of things and then called cultivation 'weird magic thingies'
She never bothered asking him how he knew, it would make her seem ignorant, and the brat already treated her like a child.
Then, the green realm shook, something was going on, but not in the pearl.
She felt a very small pull, something she was sure no mortal would be able to feel or cause, but it was enough to shake her to the depths of her soul. Something beyond her understanding was going on. The Heavens were watching.
Was it the birth of a divine treasure in a different realm powerful enough to shake the realms? Or was someone ascending to Godhood?
No. It was closer, it was right… Outside. The girl was horrified.
The power of the trembling made sense if it was this close, but it wasn't any less concerning.
The girl sighed, "What did the brat do this time to attract the Heaven's attention?"
-
The worm was the key, I could feel it in my bones. It looked inconspicuous, especially now that it was blocked out of its host's body. Small, around the size of two fingers, which for a parasite could actually be big, yellow, the light bounced off its scales, giving it a slightly metallic color.
Keeping it alive in suspended animation was exceedingly complicated. Even more complicated than actually taking it out of my profound veins, building a pseudo-vein like bridge followed by cutting it off was sufficient to expel it.
Actually tricking it into thinking that it was still inside someone was way, way harder to accomplish.
I needed to give it a constant flux of nutrients, warmth, and profound energy, the thing was incredibly greedy for all three of them. Playing with the amounts I gave it of each of them gave me large amounts of insights, incredibly useful for my research.
Firstly, the thing needed both classical macro nutrients and profound energy to grow and survive, but it was interesting that the more nutrients it received the less profound energy it needed. And vice versa, it could survive on large amounts of energy, but it still required some nutrients.
Both were essential, both could sustain it, but not on their own.
The fact that nutrients and energy could be used interchangeably to an extent was an incredible find, it opened the gates to so many hypotheses that it would have been a Nobel worthy discovery back on Earth.
But most importantly, it meant that profound energy wasn't the classical energy, it must have a mass, maybe not made of atoms, but it must have some mass and was able to interact and behave like normal matter given the right intent. And those interactions could be used to fuel the body's functions, the precise ways in which it interacted with the body's cells to permit the production of cellular energy, was a different thing entirely and required further study.
But most importantly, the fact that this small thing didn't have an internal realm, it didn't have the power of a cultivator, but still needed profound energy to survive. It all confirmed an idea I had ever since I first saw that dragon…
"You've been looking at and prodding that worm for the last five days, I never knew you had such weird interests." The voice of a sassy child who thought of herself as a divine empress entered my ears.
"Sure, dear master of mine who enjoys forcing people to grovel before her, I'm the one with weird interests." I replied without even looking at her, or showing any surprise at her sudden appearance. She's done it too many times by now to still surprise me with her tricks.
"How dare you suggest such impudent things! This Princess' interests are none of your business!" she quipped back, plopping down on a nearby chair, "What do you find so interesting in that vermin? Just get rid of it already."
"It's an incredible specimen, too interesting to get rid of." I replied, jotting down on a paper a potential diagram for the internal functions and the integration of metabolism with profound energy. Ever since I discovered how to study cellular structures with profound energy my research sped up a hundred times.
Maybe taking a pause and asking her input could help, she was the expert here after all, but she seemed weirdly dodgy when I asked her any intriguing question. I gave her my hand and said, "Take a look."
She furrowed her eyebrows and wordlessly grabbed my hand, taking a deep and long look at it, trying to figure out what exactly I was talking about. Then it dawned on her, "What is this? How did you do this?"
"Dragons and that worm, they are pretty similar in a way, and both are fundamentally different from humans," I held up a finger, stopping the outrage that she was about to unleash upon me, I could already see the anger she felt at my comparing a dragon to a worm, "neither of them would be able to exist without profound energy, their bodies are literally made of it. They don't have profound veins like us, their flesh is profound veins, and it's a natural process, it seems to give far greater affinity to it, so I tried to replicate it, it worked on plants, so I tried on myself, it's somewhat successful. It strengthened my affinity to fire from the Phoenix and sped up the energy circulation in my arm by a lot, so that's a plus." I said offhandedly, already thinking on how to proceed with enhancing the rest of my body.
"Why would you ever do something this stupid?" she looked at me, her eyes sinking to the deepest recesses of my soul, she was calm, she looked calm at least, but her aura flared up, tense, "And you succeeded, what even are you? A reincarnated God? Mortals shouldn't be able to do any of the things you do."
Her aura flared more powerful, there was something deeper in her eyes, it went beyond being just tense, the usually bratty kid suddenly started acting the way that befit her power, the power that I only saw once, if those in the sky realm felt like nuclear explosions then she was the entire Sun. And I was still just a candle, flickering in the wind.
I had forgotten this power, the metallic scent that I could smell the first time she released it came back in full strength, I didn't understand the first time, I didn't want to understand, that the little girl before me brought with her power the scent that I had heard too many times in the operation room.
Blood. More blood than I had ever even thought possible, entire rivers of the dense fluid. The sky tinted red from the flames of war. Rivers that she had forced to flow.
She, just like everyone else, was a victim of this bloodthirsty world, but she thrived on the violence of it more than most.
"First, you find me at my lowest with just the right artifact to save me, then I'm forced to give you the drop of Evil God blood that so many died for, then you start twisting reality itself with those runes of yours, and now you created a personal bloodline in a week, there is no way a mere mortal could ever do any of the things you do," she said slowly, and she was making just a little too much sense, it felt… weird, artifacted in a way, was this all planned by the being who brought me here?
Was it a coincidence that I had what I needed to thrive in this medieval hellscape handed to me on a silver platter? Not to mention the Sky Poison Pearl as well…
The might of her entire cultivation pressed on me, I could see it was straining her as well, why was she risking this if it hurt her by stimulating that weird poison in her body, "So I'll ask you once more, what are you?"
I finally understood what the look in her eyes was. But why? Out of everyone, she'd be the last person who I'd ever thought could feel that?
"You know who I am, I don't bother hiding my intentions" I decided my words very carefully, an unsettling feeling rising inside me, "Our meeting might have not been a coincidence, and if it isn't, then we are both pawns in something bigger than either of us."
She scoffed, the tenseness of the situation letting go a little, "This Empress is nobody's pawn, how dare you even assume that?"
"Because you're right, I do think that it's too suspicious, our whole situation," I sighed exasperated, I had to admit, these were questions that kept me awake more than once, "I suddenly get transported to a different world and out of nowhere I meet the only person who can give me access to the biggest power in this world? It would be the coincidence of the century."
She raised an eyebrow inquisitively, "That's the reason? Not how you just artificially created a bloodline that could devour the Phoenix's?"
"Oh, so that's why the fire felt different," I shrugged, "Honestly, at this point, I have no idea what that even is going on. I only have an idea of what it means to have a bloodline, and I know it has nothing to do with real blood, it wouldn't make sense if it was actual blood. I'm not a firebird after all…" I started rambling about.
She looked at me, her eyes twitched.
She seemed very irritated, so I gave her a shit eating grin just to piss her off even more. I didn't regret it when she punched me strong enough to hurt even my enhanced body.
Her aura retreated, albeit obviously reluctantly, she glared at me, "So you don't know anything more? Who is doing this?"
"Your guess is as good as mine." I shrugged, turning my sights back to the worm, what if I tried putting some of the dragon's blood into it? Would it work like the Phoenix's blood? Or was it different for some reason. Maybe the power of the original owner matters, did dragons have a god?
I got punched, "What did you say?"
"I said, why do you not seem concerned? You're being used by someone of unknown intentions!" she replied in irritation.
I shrugged writing down the next experiment to try out, "Being concerned wouldn't help, so why bother?"
The real problem was that I only had one test subject, could I replicate it?
That would be an entirely different field, how was I even going to do that? Would copy and paste the genetic material even work? This thing might have partly profound energy genes…
I got punched, "What did you say?"
"You should learn to listen to people more, you'll get killed if you offend the wrong person." she stated curtly.
"Don't I have you to protect me in that case?"
she turned away, looking at the worm, "I won't always be here, you need to know to protect yourself."
I flared up the runic arrays in the room, one rune flowed into another, their properties compounding and adding nuance to one another, the meaning on each turning more real, more profound, the peak of over a year of research. I unleashed upon her all the restrictive abilities I could activate, with genuine curiosity I asked "Am I getting closer to the level of power you want me to have?"
She visibly struggled and looked at me with annoyance, "I'm not going to waste my energy to break it, so deactivate this."
I smirked triumphantly and let her go, "So, how am I holding up in your estimations?"
Helooo~ sorry for the long absences all the time, reading the original among the rest of everything drains me.
give me stones to let me see if i should push to finish it
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