An old man was rhythmically tapping his foot on the wooden floor of his small house. Clear annoyance on his face.
A younger person behind him had an awkward smile because he knew damn well that he didn't want to disturb the old man.
"What are you grinning for…" the old man said without even turning.
"Ah, nothing Master Rain…" the younger man said trying to suppress his smile.
"Damn little bastard. How the fuck did he do it! AAAAAH! I'm pissed."
"What's wrong this time," the retailer said.
"Give me more wine first…" Master Rain said and the retainer poured him a cup of wine that the master downed immediately, then place the cup again for another serving.
"You shouldn't drink too much."
"This kid's enough to make me an alcoholic. God damn it. It took me so long to figure out a way to stop the puppet from self-destructing, and after reading through its memories, there is not a single interesting thing in this shit. Well, besides one, the fact that that kid has an annoying and deadly inscription on him. I'm actually thankful he didn't use it."
"An inscription that is deadly? How come, I hardly think that anything on a Nascent Soul cultivator is enough to threaten you."
"Not threaten more like an annoyance. We suppressed our cultivation to a fraction of its level to get to the barren lands since the Heavenly Law doesn't allow anyone at the Ascendant stage or above to exist there. However, the kid managed to somehow write heavenly law into an inscription, and with a single line added to them he can call forth Heavenly Tribulation lightning to destroy that inscription."
"Heavenly Tribulation lightning shouldn't be enough to even harm a hair on your head now. Especially with your cultivation level unless It's a Heavenly Devastation Lightning, that shouldn't affect you much."
Master rain shook his head. "The tribulation lightning would have been more than enough to have my defenses response, and that will reveal my cultivation, though I can easily escape it would have been a waste of time and opportunity if he did that then. However, that's not what's vexing me… it's the fact that I still don't understand this Inscription he's written…"
"Emm, that's a new symbol, I've never seen it before."
"Neither have I. It's more like a new symbol. A kid so young able to create a new Heavenly Letter… damn."
"I thought all heavenly Letters were discovered that's why we can use inscriptions."
"Yes, since all letters were supposedly discovered our understanding of inscription has stagnated, but a young kid managed to create a new one, and from the context of its usage, it's to control the flow of Qi over spatial interference, it's a limited function, but it's a new letter never the less, and adding one single letter to the dictionary means that hundreds, thousands and millions of new possible inscriptions could be made. Another…" master rain said and the retained poured him another drink.
Once he downed his cup he rubbed the bridge of his nose.
"This is so damn annoying. I don't want any of that man's disciples to know my methods…"
"Wait… you don't mean…"
"Yes, I think I'll have to go back for that kid, god damn it…"
"Can't you just you know, soul search his mind and obtain all his information."
"Are you stupid?" Master Rain looked at the retainer like he was a prehistorical man.
The awkward smile on the retainer's face was enough to express apology.
"You can steal knowledge, but you cannot steal innovation. Having his knowledge doesn't mean I could have his ability to create new things. It would be useless…AHHHH I hate this." Master Rain sighed.
"I'll have to go back to that forsaken planet again."
"By now the Fire King's Formation should be up and ready."
"I'll just blast through it and have the kid, the fire king can fuck off if I care. I helped his army by breaking the first barrier I dare him to say anything if I break the formation."
"Well, I don't think he's gonna really like it if you took the kid though." The retainer said.
"Huh? Why is that?" Master Rain said.
"Well, I just found out after a bit of investigation that because the kid released Zhang Tian that the Fire King actually went to that planet and wanted to enslave it and enslave him by proxy just to give the Wind King a Slap in the face since you know, that child went to the celestial city and released the Wind King's son, and now the Wind King can't help his son's benefactor."
"Huh, politics and shit doesn't really interest me. If any of them want to have a beef with me I'll make sure to pay them back in full."
"Even the Wind King's wife…"
"We don't talk about that damn monster of a woman…god damn it, what the hell does Shu Tian ever see in that woman…" Master Rain said as he spat on the ground.
"Well, she is pretty."
"Beauty is just preference, that woman was wild in battle. Not even the poison god could have survived her wrath."
"Ah, but back then…his master wasn't really someone to be messed with."
Master Rain sighed, "It doesn't matter, if the Fire King gets prissy I'll send him a gift, if he refuses it, I'll make his whole domain in chaos and flip him off. Let's go get that kid." Master Rain said and the two of them left the hut.
****
I flew forward, with the enemy heading towards me. Many of them began preparing spells to intercept me, but I was ready to do something they wouldn't expect.
Just as the first attacks of the Fire King's forces were about to make contact, I teleported, disappearing from sight and causing the spells around me to miss.
I appeared behind the wave of cultivators and moved forward with even faster speed.
"Spatial LOCK!" one of the cultivators spoke in an attempt to hamper my advance.
A domain manifested that attempted to stop me from teleporting again. However, never use a domain against me.
In a blink, I overpowered the domain causing the caster to have his seven orifices spew out blood like a fountain, foaming at the mouth, and eyed flipped to the inside of his skull from pain.
I surged forward heading faster to the closing formation.
Before the cultivators could follow me, I reversed the spatial sheets around me and revealed canisters by numbers aplenty.
The canisters blew up creating a massive explosive wave in space and poisonous clouds behind me.
Many other cultivators were converging towards me, and I had only one shot to leave this trap.
I poured as much poison Qi as I could into the sols of my feet and surged forward with blasting speed creating even more deadly poison in my wake.
The converging cultivators won't make it in time to stop me and the ones behind me won't be able to catch up due to the poison.
"He'll be trapped once he hits the barrier go around the poison!" one of the cultivators said and the rest of them split up, taking an even longer detour to catch me.
I could only be thankful for that man's words.
Many cultivators carrying incense pots were chanting, they could see me approach the formation they were creating but couldn't stop chanting as it was needed for them to finish up the Soul Sealing Formation.
I raised my right arm forward and struck palm first into the formation that was blocking the world.
I could have sworn that my soul was wrenched out of my body the moment I touched the inscription, my mind blanked for a second and I thought that I had died from the sheer powerful impact that surged into me and tore through newly healed up injuries.
However, I didn't die.
I twisted my palm rotating several inscriptions on the formation, and at the same time, I pulled the pen that I was given by the Black Merchant.
The pen's ability to overwrite formations was ungodly, the only bad thing about it was the monstrous amounts of Qi it eats with every stroke.
But I was prepared because if anyone were to see how many pills I had in my mouth they'd think I was going to commit suicide.
I bit through the pills and sent an even more deadly surge of Qi into my already damaged meridians and spiritual Poison Veins.
Pain, indescribable and intolerable pain coursed through me, enough that the veins on my arms burst, as blood splattered into space, forming small droplets of blood that peacefully hovered next to me.
With a single stroke of the pen, I wrote, with another, I modified, and with the last, I overwrote. A single opening, not bigger than a needle's hole, but was all I needed in order to make a connection between the space enclosed and the space outside the formation.
With that small link, I teleported once again and managed to find myself outside the formation.
The cultivators with the incense pots looked disturbed, but they couldn't move however, there were many other cultivators outside the formation and they were coming in hot on my heels.
I was wounded, exhausted, and desperately gasping for breath in space which was a ludicrous notion as there is no air there.
But I made it, in that moment I pulled the hoverboard from within my pouch and hopped on it. I stomped on a small tile I had on the hoverboard and the thruster engines on the side had their shutters open wide.
Cultivators made their way towards me faster than the speed of sound and shot spells too numerous for a man to survive.
For an agonizing long second, the Reactor trembled and began utilizing the Saint Qi. With less than a few feet from impact, the reactor sent all its power into the thrusters and for a split second, I could see the stars bend and then they transformed into long lines.
The world swam and twisted next to me as my body began feeling supreme spatial pressure.
My skin began ripping as I felt like my whole body was about to be torn to shreds.
My engraved robes tore and my sky pearl eye felt like it was about to embed itself into the back of my skull.
With all the power I could muster I pressed another time on the tile causing the defensive barrier around the hoverboard to manifest.
The protective barrier canceled out the spatial pressure and I was finally able to take a breath only to have the compounded pain and agony ram into me like a truck without breaks.
The pain was too much for my mind to bear that I fell on the hoverboard. I was feeling nothing but the cold embrace of the steel against my cheek.
And then, my vision darkened as I lost consciousness…
