Enchanted Everwood farm.
The eternal twilight sky welcomed Aksai as soon as he entered the isolated domain inside the Myriad Worlds Painting. Of course, he had brought his fresh kills with him from Dadangar.
Aksai would avoid most, if not all, problems if he were to bring his fresh kills with him in his safe zone. The thorough cleaning of the “crime scene” allowed him to keep his name spot-free.
Plus, he could use their lifeless forms as nutritional composts for some of the cultivation resources he was growing in the Enchanted Everwood farm.
Aksai did not immediately check up on Zen’s storage ring. If he was a real Blood Bakshi cultivator, Aksai believed that there would be a few curses and traps put in place for anyone who tries to claim the Blood Bakshi cultivators’ possessions as the spoils of war.
Aksai could tell that Zen was an accidental Blood Bakshi cultivator so to speak. It meant that he did not have much experience in practicing the Blood Bakshi Arts. The guy could use the blood fiends to some extent. But his lack of experience in this field was obvious to a puppeteer like Aksai.
Aksai could tell that it wasn’t long before Zen was given the part of the core inheritances related to the Blood Bakshi Arts. As such, the likelihood of there being a deadly curse on Zen’s storage ring was pretty low.
However, leaving things to chance wasn’t Aksai’s style. He liked to be as sure and prepared as possible. As such, he let the storage ring be for a while and decided to check up on the four blood fiends that Zen had summoned at a crucial time to initiate a siege on Aksai.
Aksai walked up and checked upon each of the four blood fiends. He made a few hand signs and created some Essence Equations in front of him before sending them inside the blood fiends.
As soon as Aksai’s Essence Equations entered the lifeless red forms that were the blood fiends, they shook a bit as if trying to get up from their slumber, but all of them suddenly went quiet. The Essence Equations that Aksai had sent inside the blood fiends were dispersed.
“Hmm. These blood fiends are useless to me,” Aksai concluded as he finished his analysis of the blood fiends Zen had. He wasn’t expecting much to begin with, so he wasn’t disappointed when the blood fiends turned out to be non-usable as potential puppets.
All the puppet arts came with their own forms of Essence Equations. Plus, these Essence Equations carried the marks of their owners. Once a puppet had been marked by an Essence Equation, it would be near impossible to replace it with that of the new owner.
Aksai could overwrite the existing Essence Equations to control the four blood fiends. But it was too much work for not a lot of gains. Why should he select pre-owned blood fiends when he could get his own? After all, he could get various types of puppets from Cultivation World Dadangar and Martial World Sharang.
“Since I can’t make use of them as puppets, they shall nourish my plants,” Aksai thought to himself before immediately acting on the idea. In the next moment, he made a few hand signs and made the four lifeless blood fiends float.
He sent them towards a few Spirit plants. Using his earth-element Spirit spell, he dug four distinct grave-like holes and buried the four blood fiends. The graves were then covered by the soil, turning them into incubators for the compost to form.
Aksai sent a few more Essence Equations to the buried blood fiends. These Essence Equations would speed up the decomposition process, enabling the nearby plants to absorb the nutrients faster and at much better rates.
Then, Aksai walked up to Zen’s lifeless form and pulled out the Lian Flying Sword still lodged in his thigh. The blood spilled, and the sound of more flesh getting cut was heard.
“I still can’t control this sword as fluently as I want to. But with my fully functional Spirit Sense, I can rely on it to land some critical blows,” Aksai thought to himself as he looked at the blood-soaked blade of his sword.
In the next moment, Aksai channeled his Spirit essence inside the sword and slashed empty air to get rid of the blood. When he was sure that the sword was spotless and as good as new, Aksai stored it in his storage ring once again.
“The Lian Flying Sword is made for the Spirit cultivator. It has a peculiar set of Essence Equations etched over it that only make it fully compatible for imbuing it with Spirit Essence,” Aksai wondered as he looked at Zen’s corpse with blank expressions, revising the moments of his battle with Zen in his mind.
“If I want to use my martial arts at their peak, I need a compatible weapon,” Aksai concluded as he replayed the scenes of the battle on a Spectral Screen. His neural link fabric allowed him to record himself with an Eagle Eye view using the Spirit Sense.
Naturally, he would use this function whenever he was up against some tough opponents so that he could analyze the mistakes he had committed and plus points of his enemies.
“Ideally, a sword that can allow me to channel my Spirit Essence and qi with no loss should be my weapon,” Aksai thought before smiling mirthlessly to himself.
“However, which artifact forger can make a weapon like that? They are not traveling to multiple worlds like me. The cultivators of Dadangar’s five-kingdom subcontinent don’t know what qi energy is, and the martial artists of Sharang are unaware of the existence of Spirit essence.
How can they combine the two fields when they don’t know the existence of something other than what they excel in? And I’m sure as hell not going to tell them about each other.
That leaves me with two options: either study the art of artifact forging on my own. Master various forging disciplines that are available in both worlds before combining the two distinct concepts together on a single blade, forging a sword that can allow me to execute both Spirit essence spells and martial arts to their absolute limits.
Or, I can just wield two weapons– one for use with Spirit essence and the other for use with qi energy.
The second option is much more doable for me in my current situation.
I have a Lian Flying Sword to launch Spirit-essence-based attacks. I’ll need another sword for me to wield my qi-based martial arts with. That means, I’ll also have to start learning a dual-wielding weapon style.
Hehe. Or perhaps, I should learn a triple-sword-wielding style like a certain moss-haired swordswoman. It would serve as a future plan in case I unlock a world with a different power system,” Aksai mused to himself and smiled.
